More than 1,400 dementia patients will be stranded in hospital on Christmas Day – despite being well enough to go home, a charity investigation has revealed.
The Alzheimer’s Society has blamed a ‘woefully inadequate’ lack of social care funding, in the region of £2 billion, for ‘turning wards into waiting rooms’.
Their damning investigation found dementia patients are becoming ‘part of the furniture’ and face delays up to 10 times as long as those without the disease.
Victims of dementia, which robs sufferers of their memory, rely on social care as drugs are unable to slow the progression of the incurable disease.
Karen Moore, 40, from Hebden Bridge, lost her father, Edward Knowles, who suffered from dementia, after he was stranded in hospital for six months.
She said: ‘Mum died of cancer while Dad was stuck in hospital, so I was grieving while also trying to sort out Dad’s care.
