Painful personal experience has led TV’s Anna Richardson to take a stand against the “catastrophic health and social care crisis nobody is talking about”.
The Naked Attraction presenter’s dad Jim, 83, has vascular dementia, and she’s “shocked” at how little help there is for him and others with the devastating condition.
Yet as the Alzheimer’s Society points out, dementia is the UK’s biggest killer. It already affects around a million people across the country, with figures rising – it’s believed one in three people born today will develop dementia in their lifetime.
Richardson’s father, a retired Church of England canon, was diagnosed six or seven years ago, and although he still recognises his daughter and her two brothers, he needs help looking after himself as he lives alone in sheltered accommodation in Staffordshire, within about 10 miles of his sons, who, like their sister, work full-time.
“As we know, with dementia the burden of support lands on the family,” says Richardson, 54, who lives around 200 miles away from her dad. “It’s extremely difficult to cope with. As any family affected by dementia will tell you, it’s no breeze.
“So I feel guilty, I feel frustrated, I feel angry at the lack of care, and I feel anxious about not being able to be there as much as I’d like. It’s a catastrophic health and social care crisis that nobody is talking about. It’s getting worse and it affects all of us.”
Richardson has teamed up with Alzheimer’s Society on their new ‘Behind Closed Doors’ campaign, which aims to highlight the lack of support currently offered to families dealing with dementia, and make the condition a political priority. To shine a light on the issue, the charity is asking families to share their dementia stories.
Kate Lee, CEO of the Alzheimer’s Society, says dementia “is the biggest health and social care issue of our time” and “it isn’t the priority it needs to be” – pointing out that at least a third of people living with dementia don’t have an official diagnosis and can’t access the care and treatments they need.
Richardson also fronted new Channel 4 documentary Anna Richardson: Love Loss & Dementia, which first aired on October 2, about her family’s struggles, plus those of other families trying to deal with the condition.
She says the show highlights the scale of the problem. “It also highlights the desperation of families who are struggling with dementia, the secrecy, the fact nobody is talking about it enough, and how much people are struggling in silence,” Richardson adds.
But she is determined her family will not struggle in silence about how dementia is impacting them. She says her dad has carers to help with his medication and meals, but explains: “There’s no help if dad wants to go to church on a Sunday – we can’t get him there. Or if he needs help with his emails and admin. There’s just not enough hours in the day to be able to do it. Very little help is out there.
“My brothers do as much as they can, but they work full-time and they have their own families and pressures,” Richardson adds. “It’s hugely pressurising where you have your parent ringing you constantly and saying they need help with this, or you need to come and help them with that or whatever when you’ve got children, when you’ve also got in-laws in the same situation with dementia or other health problems, and you’re trying to hold down a full-time job. It’s an impossibility.”
So, what help are Richardson and the Alzheimer’s Society calling for?
The presenter believes it should be a government priority to make the social care and health system much more joined up, stressing: “The government made obesity and cancer a priority, but it’s ignoring dementia. That is not good enough.
“We need much, much better social care – specialist dementia training, better trained carers and more of them. We need either volunteers in the community or paid help in terms of supporting and helping families and people struggling with dementia, and there needs to be proper health education in terms of telling people about how not to get dementia.
“Dementia is extremely traumatising for everybody, and this is an absolute crisis in terms of the expectation on family shoulders. We need those shoulders to be broader and to include the community and society at large.”
Richardson says she has no idea what will happen with regards to her dad’s care in the future, but she and her family want to keep him as independent as possible for as long as they can. “That’s the aim for people with this kind of disease – you need to keep them connected, sociable, and as independent as possible until the point where they’re either a danger to themselves or other people, or they’ve completely lost capacity,” she says.
“My dad isn’t at that stage, so I have no idea what the future holds for him. Dad will either die or will need to go into a home. But right now, he absolutely would fight tooth and nail not to go into a home.”
She says she believes care is “a postcode lottery” and a lot of what’s available currently is “substandard”, with no specialist dementia training.
“You would not wish that on your loved one, least of all yourself,” says Richardson. “One in three people born today are going to develop dementia – that is a shocking statistic. It affects 100% of the population, either directly because you have dementia, or indirectly because you’re going to be caring for somebody with dementia,
“This is a crisis that doesn’t just affect older people – this affects everybody.”
Share your story to help Alzheimer’s Society bring dementia out from behind closed doors at alzheimers.org.uk/stories
People can also share stories at the Behind Closed Doors installations at London’s Observation Point until 5pm on October 3, or in Manchester’s St. Ann’s Square until 5pm on October 5.
