Animal magic

At Bettercaring we take great delight in all things offbeat and decidedly oddball. So we jumped at the opportunity when a note arrived inviting us to an exotic ‘jungle safari’ at a nearby care home.

By the time we got there, all manner of creepy and cuddly critters were being paraded in front of excited care home residents. These included a fruit bat, an albino Burmese python, a rhesus monkey, ring-tailed lemur and penguin.

As the exotic creatures were passed around by specialist handlers, the home’s residents gasped in wonder and not a little awe; proving that even the frailest and most dependent people can raise the roof when they’re having a good time.

Of course, there was a serious side to the afternoon – it gave residents much needed stimulation – but it also pushed back the boundaries and challenged preconceptions of old people in care.

One lady loved snakes and had grown accustomed to them after spending time in Africa – yet never expected to see a live one again. Filled with questions about the python – and eager to give it a stroke, she showed no fear. And although others were less keen on the snake (one resident, for example, shrieked at the mere mention of the word ‘snake’), all were willing to overcome their trepidations and give it a pet.

It was a similar story for the other animals. Indeed, the penguin and rhesus monkey proved so popular the event over-ran by an hour-and-a-half.

But what really struck me was the attentiveness of the residents – especially towards the animals. I expected the day to be a trying test of patience, with the residents bored and disinterested. In fact, they couldn’t wait to see what was next.

Even after the animals had gone, the home was still buzzing with excitement. The activities co-ordinator was pleased; the day had been a roaring success and she was looking into hosting another animal safari day…despite the penguin’s insistence on messing everywhere and the monkey escaping into the manager’s office.

In fact, the only grumpy face in the building belonged to Buster the Shih Tzu pat dog – who must’ve been feeling like an endangered species himself.

Car park rage

Good news for people in Scotland and Wales that have loved ones in hospital; no more will you have to pay for the privilege of parking at the hospital to visit them.

But for those that reside in England, the charges – often equivalent to multi-storey car parks – remain in place.

It doesn’t seem fair – wasn’t the NHS set up to be free for all? Even if you purchase a weekly or season ticket, it is still not cheap to park.

I’ve written before on the practice of charging for car parking – basically, I think it’s immoral – but this rubs it in.

While the Scottish Government and Welsh Assembly should be applauded for getting rid of these charges, the UK government should be condemned for not following suit.

The government is not going to follow either. Health Minister Ben Bradshaw said he did not believe it was a “sensible use of limited resources” to subsidise car parking at hospitals in England.

However, I’m pretty sure that the Welsh and Scottish branches of the NHS aren’t swimming in excess cash, but they still seem to have found the money to do it, so I don’t buy that excuse.

I also don’t believe another comment from Bradshaw. He added that hospital trusts set their own charges to cover the cost of running and maintaining a car park. If so, how it can cost that much - £3.30 for 2 hours at one hospital in Birmingham - to look after a bit of tarmac with some white lines painted on it is beyond me. Even with a few CCTV cameras and a security guard or two, the cost is not that high – certainly not high enough to justify the charges.

It feels like yet another way that taxpayers are being fleeced through no fault of their own.

Nobody should have to pay to visit their loved ones. My advice is to find the nearest side street to the hospital, park there and walk in.

Alzheimer’s breakthrough gives real hope

When I first heard about a potential breakthrough in finding a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease last night, I was sceptical.

I’ve banged on about this in previous blogs, but in recent weeks it seems every day has brought new stories of potential treatments for Alzheimer’s or ways to stop it developing in the first place. From properties in blood pressure or cholesterol control drugs (promising), through tomatoes and tea (doubtful) to a helmet that bathes the user in infra-red light (downright odd) it seems anything and everything could be the key.

So many theories left me jaded and cynical; it seemed no-one really had any concrete clues as to what could treat the condition.

But this changed last night.

British scientists say a drug called rember can stop Alzheimer’s progressing by as much as 81%. There are hopes it could even stop the condition in its early stages, before symptoms appear.

Crucially, rember targets the ‘tangles’ in the brain of someone with Alzheimer's that destroy nerve cells and lead to a deterioration in memory and can bring the worst affected parts back to functional life. While not reversing the condition, it does seem to virtually halt its progress

By addressing the tangles, seemingly with success – although the trial was only on 321 people – it goes to the crux of the condition and genuinely seems to offer an effective treatment that could extend the functional life of people with Alzheimer's by years.

While my optimism is tempered by the facts that it could still be several years before the drug is ready to bring to market, and even then there is no guarantee it will be available on the NHS – remember NICE’s decision on Aricept [see Dementia: restricted access to drugs ] - it is nonetheless the most concrete evidence yet that finally the trauma of dementia could be on the way to being beaten.

Are you running the risk of dementia?

If newspaper reports from the past 7 days are to be believed, women who had low IQ as children, now have high cholesterol and blood pressure and regularly eat tofu are destined to be struck down with dementia.

Meanwhile, men over the age of 90 who eat plenty of tomatoes and fish are in great shape to avoid the condition.

Some of it we know already, such as the memory benefits provided by fish; others are new. But the constant reportage makes for information overload. Throw in recent genetic breakthroughs and you’d think we’re on the cusp of a genuine breakthrough in treating the disease.

The problem is, we’re constantly on the cusp – and waiting for a cure for Alzheimer’s is like waiting for a bus that’ll never arrive. Although I’d like to be proved wrong.

More potential causes will come and go over the next few weeks. We’ll continue to be told what is good and bad for us to eat – potentially scary if you’ve spent a lifetime eating the ‘wrong’ food – and never even known.

Take the latest culprit, tofu. A supposed ‘superfood’ - many healthy and committed vegetarians swear by it – yet now their being told it could cause dementia.

This theory may be debunked over time, while the search for other causes continues relentlessly.

There’s no doubt such findings are needed - but shouldn’t the boffins keep the results to themselves until they find a cure? Or at least make a genuine breakthrough?
By Robert Mair

Hope of deliverance

Yesterday was a good day for people like pensioner Margaret Coates.

She made headlines in March because she faced blindness after her local PCT refused to fund the drug treatment needed to combat her wet age-related macular degeneration.

Bromley PCT said it would only fund treatment for those with unusual or unique clinical factors, and Mrs Coates had neither.

But the kind of issues affecting the pensioner could be a thing of the past in England if the recommendations in Lord Ara Darzi’s review of the NHS are put into practice.

One of the key tenets of Lord Darzi’s review is to ‘personalise’ – that word again – services to make them fit for everyone’s needs, “includ[ing] those people traditionally less likely to seek help or who find themselves discriminated against in some way”.

In addition, Lord Darzi says the NHS should “guarantee patients access to the most clinically and cost effective drugs and treatments” where the clinician recommends them.

Reading between the lines, this should mean that older people such as Mrs Coates will be able to get the treatment they need.

There was more good news in Lord Darzi’s report. The commitment to preventative healthcare should help pensioners and people with learning disabilities to remain in their own homes for longer.

A focus on quality rather than targets is also welcome. Putting the emphasis on providing quality, individual care and improving standards harks back to the earlier days of the NHS and is long overdue.

But while Lord Darzi’s report on the future of the NHS makes for heartening reading, it is up to the government to deliver on it and as ever this is the potential sticking point; neither he nor the government has made any mention – that I can find – of how this will be paid for.

This is worrying. The NHS is underfunded and implementing the recommendations of the report will not be cheap.

Where the extra money will come from to make good on these commitments is a mystery to me and without a coherent strategy for funding it I can see Lord Darzi’s report falling flat. That would be a great opportunity missed and people like Mrs Coates will still not receive the treatment they need.

Carer’s Strategy – a step forward?

The government’s much-vaunted update of the Carer’s Strategy was launched earlier this week and, as ever, while it contains some help for those in need, it doesn’t go far enough.

The new Carer’s Strategy certainly makes some bold commitments. For example, it says that by 2018 ‘carers will be able to have a life of their own alongside their caring role’ and will be ‘respected as expert care partners and will have access to the integrated and personalised services they need to support them in their caring role’.

But cut through the raft of rather woolly but well-meaning objectives and there is little concrete detail of how this will be achieved. I assume this will come later, possibly around election time, if you’ll excuse my cynicism.

Nevertheless, there are positives; the measures that have been announced, such as establishing a helpline and website for carers and launching a training programme for carers, seem to be a move in the right direction. I often hear carers saying that information is at best difficult to come by and anything that will help them cope with their responsibilities better is a good thing.

The move to double the amount of respite time available is also good news; it is now becoming acknowledged that carers – and the people they care for – need to have breaks from each other.

But the real bugbear is that the Carer’s Allowance, which currently stands at a frankly pathetic £50.55 a week – or £2,682 a year – has been left untouched.

The benefit, which is the lowest available, is often not worth the hassle and can tie carers into a poverty trap; if they earn more than £95 per week or study for more than 21 hours per week they can no longer receive it.

But rather than give any immediate increase in the benefit, the government has chosen to lump it in with the wider review of care funding and benefits, which is currently in a 6-month public consultation process and the review won’t be released until some time next year.

Until then, the new strategy will not affect many carers’ lives and no matter how many platitudes are trotted out, it will be the pound in their pocket that many carers will be most interested in and will make the most difference to them.

Social care cuts: a worrying story

Now, only 4 councils provide care for the neediest in society, according to a report on the BBC’s Politics Show.

Good news if you live in Calderdale, Sunderland, Darlington or on the Scilly Isles – but worrying for the rest of us. Over 75% of local authorities now provide social care for elderly and disabled people who meet the criteria for ‘substantial’ needs. For those with ‘moderate’ or ‘low’ needs, they are left to face the challenges on their own.

And the situation’s unlikely to improve any time soon.

An estimated £6 billion budget shortfall over the next 20 years, caused by an ageing population and more demand for services, will further restrict the opportunities for those at the lower end of the care spectrum.

The much-touted personal care budgets will do little to ease the situation and simply shift the burden away from social services and onto the families, who will struggle to fill the gaps in the care services.

But at least there’s one solution in the short-term; you could always move to Sunderland…