Dementia care costs 'crippling'
Updated on 26 June 2008
Sufferers of dementia and their families are facing a financially crippling "tax" burden paying for care which is often inadequate, a report has said.
More than half of people with dementia living in care homes are paying in excess of £300 per week towards their care, equivalent to £15,600 a year.
The stark findings are contained in the Alzheimer's Society's new report "The Dementia Tax", which lays bare the huge costs shouldered by sufferers and their families of paying for often sub-standard care.
The charity argues the current system of means testing for social care is a tax on people with dementia, whose care is deemed to be social care, rather than health care available free on the NHS.
Two thirds of carers looking after a person at home pay for vital care, with one in three forking out over £50 per week.
Neil Hunt, the charity's chief executive said people were having to pay for care from money set aside to heat their homes or buy food.
And he warned the country faced an increasingly serious problem, as the numbers living with dementia are expected to reach 1.7 million by 2051.
He said: "People with dementia and their families are being hit harder than almost any other group with the current system of paying for care.
"It really does have a crippling impact on family's budgets. It is an illness that may go on for ten years or more and therefore the hit is far greater than for people with other illnesses. Why is it that dementia is being exempt in this way."
Mr Hunt maintained people no longer wished to pay to "prop up a broken system that fails to deliver quality care" and a political consensus was urgently needed to introduce a fairer system of funding and charging for care.
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