Health secretary backs Baroness Casey’s call for a ‘strong and meaningful’ dementia leadership role and other immediate actions she said are urgently needed in dementia and motor neurone disease care, and adult safeguarding.
A dementia leadership role will be created within a redesigned department as NHS England is abolished, and will be informed “by lessons learned from the cancer tsar role”, the health secretary Wes Streeting has announced.
In a letter to Baroness Louise Casey responding to her call in a speech today for a series of “immediate actions” to deal with “urgent need” in the care sector, Mr Streeting said he agreed there was a need for a “strong and meaningful dementia leadership role in the new Department of Health and Social Care to drive forward action across the health and care system”.
In response to the Social Care Independent Review chair's wider call for better access to treatment he added that he “strongly recognise[s] the importance of dementia trials for identifying critical ways to improve the lives of people with dementia" - which he described as one of the “greatest challenges of our time”.
In the letter, Mr Streeting said he would be making a decision on investment in a new umbrella dementia treatment approach Access-Ad after officials report back to him next month on a trial review.
The health secretary also wrote that he welcomed Baroness Casey's emphasis – also set out in a letter to him earlier this week - on a need for urgently improved care for people with motor neurone disease (MND) and commited to “take forward immediate work to develop a fast-track process, or ‘passport’, that speeds up assessments and access to care for people diagnosed with MND”.
And he wrote he would respond to another key area highlighted by Baroness Casey on safeguarding in adult care and set-up" a new national safeguarding board, chaired by the chief social worker" Sarah McClinton which will report to the care minister Stephen Kinnock.
“I will ensure that a key part of the urgent review’s remit will be to identify whether this board requires new statutory powers to be most effective, as you recommend,” he wrote,
“I will also ensure that the urgent review tests whether the current framework provides sufficient clarity and leverage in high-risk situations,” he added.
