YDN November webinar

UCL and Tower Hamlets memory clinic psychiatrist Dr Nick Bass will lead Young Dementia Network’s November webinar. He and Jana Mikova, clinical nurse specialist in genomic medicine, will explain the North Thames Genomic Medicine Service Alliance transformation project to embed genomic investigation in mental health service-provided memory clinics. They will go on to discuss implications…

Diagnosis rates vary massively

As diagnosis rates continue to languish below government targets, a new parliamentary report shows that where you live has a massive impact on whether you get a timely diagnosis of dementia. The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Dementia has published “Raising the Barriers: An Action Plan to Tackle Regional Variation in Dementia Diagnosis in England,”…

Minorities face highest risks

Research from UCL, just published in PLOS One, looked at modifiable dementia risk factors by ethnic group, found that hypertension conferred a higher risk of dementia in black people compared to white people, while a combination of hypertension, obesity, diabetes, low HDL cholesterol and sleep disorders conferred a higher risk on South Asian people. Compared…

Care home stays shorter

Average length of stay in a care home has decreased to around 13 months, compared with 1.8 years before the pandemic and 2.2 years in 2011, according to figures quoted by the Downing investment company. The company states that the sector is changing because the needs of those moving into care are increasingly acute.  Mark…

GPs and assistive tech

Many GPs believe that assistive technologies could bring substantial benefits to their patients with dementia, particularly devices like an intuitive app to help them navigate their community, gadgets reminding them to take medications, and smart glasses to tell them who they are looking at. According to an Alzheimer’s Society survey, 76% of GPs worry that…

Prevention study

Up to 73% of dementia cases could be prevented by lifestyle changes, a new study of 344,000 people over 15 years suggests. Researchers behind the study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, investigated 210 modifiable risk factors and found that personal measures such as increasing physical strength, more leisure and social activities, more time…

Social care work

Around 390,000 people left their social care jobs in 2022/23 and around a third of them left the sector altogether, says Skills for Care in its annual State of Social Care report. In spite of the numbers leaving the sector, vacancy rates fell to 9.9% from 10.6% the previous year, although the reduced figure still…

Montessori approach

A two-day workshop to talk about the Montessori approach for dementia and ageing will take place in London on 20 and 21 November.  It will be led by Anne Kelly, a nurse and expert in the care of older people, who has been a major proponent of the approach in her native Australia. “Dementia and…

Young dementia

Young Dementia Network (YDN) has created a short animation explaining what YDN is, what it does and how to join up. The narrator in the “What is the Young Dementia Network” video, available on the YDN website and on its YouTube channel, talks from the perspective of someone with young onset dementia and the typical…