Some good information from a local resident:

For people with dementia and their families, choosing a care home can be an incredibly stressful and difficult process.

Alzheimer’s Society has produced a new handy guide to selecting a care home. A copy of this guide can be downloaded from their website alzheimers.org.uk/lowexpectations

In addition they have developed in association with the Royal College of Nursing ‘This is me,’ a simple and practical tool that someone going into a care home can give to staff to help them understand their needs.

To ensure everyone has access to these guides, it would be incredibly helpful if you could inform the local Director of Social Services and ask them to:

• Make the handy guide to selecting a home available to individuals seeking information from the council
• Ask them to make local care homes aware of ‘This is me’ and encourage its use

Alzheimer’s Society has published these tools alongside the report Low Expectations – Attitudes on choice, care and community of people with dementia in care homes

Amongst other findings, the report found that:

• 80 per cent of care home residents – more than 320,000 – have dementia or severe memory problems. That’s drastically higher than previously thought.
• Excellent quality care exists, but pessimism about life in care homes is leading to people settling for less. Three quarters of relatives would recommend their loved one’s care home despite less than half saying their relative has a good quality of life.
• The sector has a real image problem. 70 per cent of people are worried about going into a home and two thirds don’t think the sector is doing enough to tackle abuse.
• Alzheimer’s Society is campaigning for government and the best care homes to be shouting from the rooftops for minimum standards and more effective regulation because it’s the underperforming homes dragging the rest of the sector down.

To find out more about the report and what the Alzheimer’s Society is calling for go to http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/lowexpectations

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