Anatomy of a media story about dementia and social care

We meet our case study, Bill and Gwyneth.   We are introduced to Gwyneth. She has dementia.  Her identity and value lie in the past, not the present.  She was a formidable, self-standing woman, who achieved great things.  Now she is just a shell.  A non-person.  Dementia is a ‘cruel disease’.  Nothing will get better for her.  Her own health and wellbeing are beyond reach.

Gwyneth was a person.  Now she is just someone’s growing burden.

Now we meet Bill. His identity is in the present.  He is Gwyneth’s husband, and struggling carer.  He loves Gwyneth, and he wants her to be with him in their home, but he can’t cope.  We see him not coping.  It is heart-rending.  He has tried homecare but it was a waste of money.  He is steeling himself for the day Gwyneth moves to a care home, which is ‘inevitable’, but we also learn just how expensive is going to be.  Bill’s story is why we should care and want as a country to invest more.

People with dementia are expensive and burdensome.

We are told about the crisis in social care.  About the backlog of assessments, the gaps in the workforce, of how councils are resisting implementation of funding reforms which in any case will barely touch the lives of people like Bill and Gwyneth, because implementing them is too costly.  We are told about how all this is clogging up the NHS. 

The growing burden seems insurmountable. 

A spokesperson for for-profit care home providers says we need more government money.  A spokesperson for a charity says we need more money.  Another says we need more short breaks for people like Bill to escape the burden or caring, and more government money to pay for it. No one says we can improve the lives of people living with dementia, or how, or makes a case for why.

People with dementia are expensive and burdensome.  It would be good to relieve people like Bill, and the NHS of this burden.  But the cost of doing so is a huge burden and potentially unrealistic.

We turn to a clip of Bill & Gwyneth with their daughter and young grandchildren.  Now Gwyneth seems animated, at ease and connected.  She is reading to them. No longer just an object in the story, but a key protagonist.  Clearly, she holds value to other people who love her and there are things that can enhance her wellbeing, when her humanity and status are reaffirmed.  

But the interviewer then asks an emotional Bill what he would say to Gwyneth were she to ‘come back’ for just a moment.  He says he would tell her that he loved her.  Gwyneth is sent back to the past once again. 

In this story, she is long gone.  

She is just a burden now.

The viewers are moved. But we are left without answers. And so we just hope we don’t become a burden or become burdened by dementia.