More than 50,000 people with dementia are ending up in hospital for emergency treatment every year as cuts to "threadbare" social care mean minor conditions are becoming life-threatening, according to a report by the Alzheimer's Society.
Avoidable emergency admissions have increased by 70 per cent in the past five years. The increase coincides with a 40 per cent cut to local authority budgets since 2012, as part of the government's austerity measures.
"Successive governments have shirked the issue of our threadbare social care system," said the charity's chief executive, Jeremy Hughes. "Starved of the care they need, people with dementia end up in A&E as a last resort, disrupting their home life and forcing them to struggle in crowded hospital wards. It shouldn't and needn't be like this."
The Alzheimer's Society said that the overworked and underpaid care workforce lacks time and training which means people with dementia are not getting the support they need.
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