We've been keen supporters of John's Campaign here at Local Dementia Guide since it was started by friends Nicci Gerrard and Julia Jones back in November 2014.
The campaign, to allow the carers of people with dementia the right to stay with them in hospital, or visit them on the ward at any time, has attracted support from both professionals and families alike, and over the past 16 months has become hugely successful in generating the momentum needed for change.
Already over 250 hospitals have pledged their support to the campaign and opened up their doors to allow carers to assist with the care for their loved ones.
And now, as the campaign has been officially endorsed by NHS England in its newly published Commissioning for Quality and Innovation payment framework, the incentive for ALL hospitals to change their policies to allow better access for carers, grows even stronger.
Writing for The Guardian, which has championed the campaign from the very start and has a dedicate page online, Tracy McVeigh explains more...
"From April, financial rewards will be available to healthcare providers who apply the principles espoused by John’s Campaign, which began after a powerful response by Observer readers to an article written in 2014 by the novelist Nicci Gerrard.
The piece followed the death of her father, Dr John Gerrard, who had been living well with Alzheimer’s until his admission to hospital for an unrelated condition earlier in the year. During his five-week stay, visits from his family had been severely restricted by hospital policy and his decline was catastrophic and irreversible.
The public response to the feature made Gerrard and co-founder Julia Jones aware of the scale of the problem and they began John’s Campaign on 30 November 2014.
There are more than 850,000 people in the UK living with dementia and as a group their experience of stays in hospital is significantly worse than other people of the same age.
Julia Jones’s 92-year-old mother, June, lives with Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia, and the idea of an unsupported hospital admission for her is, said Julia, as unthinkable as it would be to expect a young child to cope alone in hospital.
The campaign has had an enthusiastic response from its earliest days and to date 250 hospitals across the UK have pledged to welcome carers of people with dementia whenever the patient needs them. The campaigners are pushing to have this policy embedded nationwide.
The action by NHS England has significantly moved the campaign forward by making the adoption of John’s Campaign one of the official choices available to clinical commissioning groups across the country from April.
Alistair Burns, the national clinical director for dementia and mental health in older people with NHS England, said:
“We would encourage hospital trusts, as part of the care they provide to individuals with dementia and their families, to consider facilitating an approach whereby the families and carers of people with dementia can support them fully while they are in hospital.”
Jane Cummings, chief nursing officer for England, was an early backer of John’s Campaign, calling it “practical, achievable and representing positive practice in terms of delivering truly person-centred care for people with dementia”.
“We agree that there should be open visiting rules for the carers of people with dementia,” she said, “And the evidence has shown that this is good for patients, good for carers and good for NHS staff.”
Article first published in The Guardian 13/03/16
