Anna Richardson is angry. “I’m actually raging,” says the normally sunny anchor of TV shows as diverse as Supersize vs Superskinny, The Big Breakfast and, most infamously, Naked Attraction. And no wonder. For the last six years, the 54-year-old and her Staffordshire-based family have been pushed to breaking point, caring for her increasingly fragile 83-year-old father Canon Jim Richardson OBE.
Following a 2018 diagnosis of vascular dementia, he has suffered a series of transient ischaemic attacks – essentially mini strokes – sparking a heart-breaking cognitive and physical decline that is now transforming the once effervescent linchpin of his community into an isolated, vulnerable shadow of a man prone to regular falls, confusion and crippling memory loss.
“I’ve never been so stressed in my life,” admits Anna, who shares Jim’s care with her two brothers Mark and Ben, who also both work full time, and her 81-year-old mother Janet – who was actually divorced from her father 40 years ago.
It’s a daily struggle faced by millions of Britons, with one in three people born in the UK this year expected to develop some form of dementia in their lifetime.
It is now officially Britain’s biggest cause of death but, as Anna explores in tonight’s moving Channel 4 documentary Love, Loss and Dementia, the under-resourced and ill-equipped social care system is buckling under the pressure. The end result is over-extended families picking up the slack.
“The problem is that whether they want it or not, and whether they’re able to deal with it or not, the burden of care falls on families,” explains the TV presenter.
“My mum does what she can, but she’s 81, she isn’t able to physically lift dad or deal with him, and they separated four decades ago. Dad lives on his own in assisted living housing and has carers three times a day to help him with his medication and his meals, and we try to keep on top of his cleaning and shopping, but he’s fallen three times in the last month.
“He’s often on the floor all night till he’s found the next morning and his TIAs are becoming more frequent, and if they’re serious he needs to be rushed to A&E to minimise the damage they do, but each time he has one, his cognitive abilities continue their incremental decline.
“My brothers try their best as do I, but I work full time and can’t drop everything at the drop of a hat, and like millions of other families, we’ve found ourselves asking, ‘Where does the burden of care land?’ It’s a national disgrace.”
She believes we urgently need a national conversation about the future of social care – especially around treatment, education and supervision regarding our rapidly growing population of dementia-sufferers. What especially infuriates her is the lack of attention given to the condition.
“Dementia and dementia care has to be a priority, and I’m angry about it, in fact I’m raging,” Anna continues. “The social care and health care system needs to be overhauled, and we need public education, and health care education around prevention.
“There are around 100 different types of dementia and many of them are biological diseases affected by lifestyle.
“When dad was working – and he devoted his life to the church – he was very stressed. He was extremely busy. He was eating on the run. He never exercised. He enjoyed a drink in the parish, he had diabetes, and he was carrying a bit too much weight.
“And an awful lot of people in this country currently struggle with all these things, which all contributed to dad’s vascular dementia. All the evidence tells us that if you look after your heart, you’re also looking after your brain, so if we can prevent more people from developing dementia by basically looking after themselves a bit better, then we will reduce the bed blocking, which my dad is part of.”
The whole process needs re-examining, she says. The cost to the health system and wider economy is enormous and growing.
Anna’s father was once pastor of prestigious Sherborne Abbey in Dorset, but illness has made him utterly dependent and extremely vulnerable to accidents.
“When he falls, the paramedics have to be called, he’s then taken to hospital where’s he’s scanned and then eventually cleared, but with better education the resources used in this process could be redirected,” she sighs. “But the politicians don’t give a s***. There’s a perception dementia is an elderly people’s disease, which it is not.
“Looking back, the signs of dad’s dementia were there decades before he was diagnosed, and he actually had a stroke when he was 41. I also think there’s a perception among politicians that, ‘Oh God, this is just too big to deal with because there are so many systems involved.’
They’re like, ‘Well, it’s sort of being managed by families anyway, so we don’t need to worry about it.’ What they’re not understanding is that this is costing the economy hugely, and that if we can convince them that it’s going to be cheaper for the economy and for all of us by putting better health education in place, better healthcare systems in place and better social care in place then we won’t be taking as many workers – usually women – out of the workforce.
“My understanding is that the new Labour government is listening more than the old Conservative government, but I think they still need convincing that it makes sound financial sense.
“They need to act now. We’ve made cancer a priority. We’ve made obesity a priority. We made Covid a priority. How come we’re not making Britain’s biggest killer a priority?”
Anna, who worked in an old people’s home as a student, fears the care system is no better than it was 35 years ago.
“I believe that’s because society hides old people away, particularly old people with dementia and end stage dementia, as it’s somehow seen as a weakness or a failure and there’s this stigma surrounding it, and I find how we’re dealing with it frightening,” she says.
“And as a middle-aged person I’m looking down this narrow lens and thinking, ‘Is this where we’re going to end up?’ No thank you. The situation is critical.”
The documentary follows other families’ dementia journeys including 63-year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer Richard, whose wife Mary is eventually left with no choice but to move her husband into full time residential care, a prospect that fills Anna with absolute horror. “I don’t want my dad to go into care and he doesn’t want to go into care. He wants to stay as independent as possible.
“This is a really hard thing to say, but I would rather that God took him with a massive heart attack or a massive stroke before he ended up at end stage dementia, because it would be a swifter, less cruel exit.”
Harrowing though filming the documentary has clearly been for Anna, the silver lining has been that the process has brought her emotionally closer to her ageing father.
“Our family was a little bit shattered 40 years ago when my parents split so we’ve never been very good at expressing how we feel to each other, but making the film has definitely strengthened our bond,” she says. “At this stage in dad’s life, what he really relishes is connection. He actually just wants to be around his family, to be close to us, so in a funny way, it has brought us closer, and it’s made me realise that we have to make the most of now.”
The presenter continues: “Somebody said to me recently, ‘You should write your dad a love letter,’ and I would urge everybody, anybody who sees the documentary or who is reading this, to tell your parents you love them. It doesn’t matter what’s happened in your childhood and your life, or about any grievances from teenage years you might have with your parents. Just write that letter. Before it’s too late.”
Recently approved – although still prohibitively expensive – early-stage dementia drug Lecanemab is giving younger sufferers fresh hope of decelerating the progress of the disease, but Anna believes that the key to a brighter future for millions of people is government intervention.
She adds: “My deepest wish is that we make this a national conversation and that we start to talk about it more and put pressure on the government and our local MPs to say this now needs to become a priority,
“And just to shine a light on the fact that this is a juggernaut coming down the road for all of us, and we need to change that. Now. So that nobody else has to suffer in the way you can see these people suffering on the film.”
Anna Richardson: Love, Loss and Dementia is on Channel 4 tonight at 10pm. If you are worried about yourself, or someone close to you, call the Alzheimer’s Society Dementia Support Line on 0333 150 3456