There was an article in Saturday’s Guardian – Diary of a Dutiful Daughter. Extracts from a daughter’s diary about the difficulties of getting care and the associated financial costs, for her mother who has dementia. It is a very clear statement of the way people with dementia may be in effect abandoned by the services which are supposed to be helping them.
I wanted to email the journalist, Melanie McFadyean, but she did not give her contact details – to say, yes, and could you also write about early onset dementia, where the issues are the same, but the protagonists are middle-aged, the same age as the professionals who commission and deliver services. As long as we think dementia is something only that happens to aged mothers, we will continue to think there is nothing really to be done, sad isn’t it.