‘Your dad’s got dementia. He doesn’t know where he is, so it doesn’t matter if we move him to a cheaper home’: A social worker’s dismissive words to TV presenter Anna Richardson – an attitude that’s shamefully common

Reverend James Richardson built his life around the Church. While some of the details of his career are a bit blurry for him, his faith is one thing that remains intact.

Dementia does that. It takes everything eventually.

Yet the walls of her room in a Staffordshire care home are covered with pictures that remind her of who she was and still is.

‘It’s very difficult to move a parent into care, especially if they’re resistant, which they are,’ says her daughter, TV presenter Anna Richardson.

‘It was like a military operation. We tried to protect the things that were important to him. Even though he could no longer read, he was determined to buy all his books. He wanted photos of his family, so they’re all there: the wedding photo, a photo of him receiving the OBE, a photo of him meeting the Queen, a photo of him meeting the Pope.

‘All of these identities are touchpoints of who he is. ‘Sometimes I can see him looking at the walls and checking them out.’

It was heartbreaking for her children to move their father, ‘this strong, vibrant, community-minded man’, into this care home over a year ago (Anna has two brothers), but these are decisions that loving families have to make.

‘We’ve reached the point where it’s not safe for him to be on his own, even in an assisted living facility,’ says Anna. He was falling a lot and ended up in the hospital.

Everyone experiences dementia differently. Use this checklist to help you note your symptoms before talking to your doctor.

‘One of our residents found him wandering around outside in his underwear, which was undignified and unsafe.

‘My father did not want to enter a house. He wanted his independence. He fought tooth and nail for this. But he needed 24-hour care, so we had no choice.’

It was a relief to have this house, partly funded by the local council; partly because of his modest pension – it was right next to the church where he worshiped. ‘That’s another thing that’s harder, because my dad is mostly wheelchair-bound now, so someone has to take him there,’ says Anna.

But imagine his anger when he received notice that the local authority wanted to move his father to a cheaper care home 50 miles away.

‘I had to fight for him to stay here,’ he explains. ‘The social worker said, “He has dementia. It doesn’t matter because he doesn’t know where he is.” I was angry about this.

‘I made a formal complaint. I have little to say about our experience with the care home system and social services. Imagine telling a family that it doesn’t matter what happened to their loved one because they won’t remember it anyway.

‘It says it all about how people like my father get thrown away when they get old. And it says everything about our attitudes towards dementia.’

Few people navigating the social care system will be surprised by a new report revealing that vulnerable dementia patients are being cared for by staff with fewer hours of training than a barista.

Findings from the Alzheimer’s Association, Dementia Research Center and IFF Research show that nearly half of care home staff do not receive specific dementia training, even though nearly 70 percent of residents have the condition. The study also found that half of dementia courses lasted just one to two hours; This is shorter than the training time for making frothy coffee.

Anna, an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Association, wasn’t surprised. ‘I am very angry about the low standards of social and intervention care in this country,’ she says.

‘I have to be careful what I say about my father’s care home, but I will say that what I witnessed was shocking.

‘I’m talking about people being lined up in front of inappropriate TV screens and forced to sit there all day with no other warning. They are not given proper food. If you have dementia, you need brightly colored foods because your appetite and ability to distinguish foods on your plate changes. This is why most people with dementia lose weight.

‘There is also a lot of ignorance about how to talk to people with dementia. In my father’s case, I went to see him and asked the staff to tell me, “Oh, he’s away with the fairies today.”

‘I had to take them aside and tell them that it was not appropriate to say this to a family member and certainly not in front of the person. ‘This is one of the foundations of dementia care.’

Angry but also tired because it feels like there’s such an epic struggle to get the foundations in place.

In 2024, Anna made a documentary about her family’s fight for Channel 4; part battle cry, part elegy for his father.

In addition to introducing viewers to her daily life (at the time in an assisted living facility), she also met other families trying to navigate an often impossible path.

His father’s broad smile and sense of humor were an important part of this program; So how is it now?

“He still knows who I am, which is a good thing,” Anna says. ‘I’ll come over and he’ll say ‘Hi darling’ but he starts saying ‘I miss you’ which he’s never done before. ‘This is very difficult.’

Anna says she’s also more confused. ‘You must come into this world with him. Many people say: “Oh yes dad. You’re going to meet the Queen today. It’s wonderful.”

How sad Anna’s story is. And how common it is.

He came into this world after his father, a retired Leeds vicar and the man who ‘carried me on his shoulders’, suffered a stroke nearly nine years ago.

A brain scan revealed that some areas of his brain had died. He has vascular dementia (due to reduced blood flow to the brain, which kills tissue), and like other types of dementia such as Alzheimer’s, there is no cure.

Who would undertake most of the care his father would need? Anna and her siblings, of course. But they have children and full-time jobs while their brothers live an hour away from their father in their native Staffordshire.

Anna, whose career took her to London in the 1990s, has no children and is self-employed.

‘The local vicar was very helpful but I will criticize the Church of England,’ says Anna. ‘My father devoted his life to the Church and I don’t see much support coming from that.’

As well as a house in London, he also has a small cottage next door to his mother’s house in Staffordshire (his parents have been divorced for over 40 years), making it easy to commute to ‘deal with various crises’.

He says managing geographic distance is something many people experience. ‘Whenever Dad falls, we race to see who can get there quickest.

‘We had cameras installed in our assisted living apartment and one time I saw it on the bathroom floor at 5am while I was obsessively checking it. He was there all night.

‘He found himself in the hospital corridor. I will never forget that when he was discharged, he needed to go to the toilet in the middle of the crosswalk in the parking lot.

‘He can’t hold his urine. We had no choice but to lift him out of his wheelchair mid-transition so he could go.

‘My other half was trying to shield him from everyone seeing but I kept saying ‘My dad has dementia.’ I am sad. I was apologizing by saying ‘I’m sorry’. I cried then for him, for this honorable man. He would hate to be in this situation.’ Despite their divorce, touchingly Anna’s mother is still part of this coping ‘package’. ‘They have a very strange relationship, but she’s still the only one who can make my father laugh,’ says Anna.

So how does Anna herself cope? He begins by telling me that he is better equipped than most because, as well as his broadcasting career, he is also a hypnotherapist and so has access to a ‘toolkit’ for the stresses of life.

But the general impression is that she is a woman at her breaking point. ‘I honestly find it disastrous and endless,’ he says.

‘I used antidepressants from time to time; I’m currently on a low dose because I found myself falling into depression and anxiety.

‘It’s the frustration of dealing with social services, care homes and someone with dementia.

‘Most days I get a call from my dad because he needs something. He’ll yell “I can’t hear you” because the TV is on at one million. It’s so tiring.’

Anna told me that she no longer went to Staffordshire alone after a particularly worrying visit when she had to pull over on her return ‘because I thought I was going to lose control’.

‘Now my other half guides me,’ he says. ‘She was amazing but these things affect relationships, finances and every other aspect of your life. That’s why we need more help.’

Is there support from the church? ‘The local vicar was very helpful but I will criticize the Church of England,’ says Anna. ‘My father devoted his life to the Church and I don’t see much support coming from him.’

None of this conveys, sadly for me. Anna knows she is better equipped to cope than most. ‘Well, if I’m struggling, what about other people?’ he asks.

‘One in three of us will develop dementia. It’s coming for all of us. Isn’t it time we became better equipped as a society?’

It is also true that when it comes down to it, Anna, who is now 55, will not have children to shoulder the burden. ‘Which kids do this?’ he says. ‘So, you don’t have children so they can take care of you, but there are many people among us who don’t have children. Where are we all going?’

Unfortunately, Anna knows where her father went. He told me about the moment he realized how far down the road they were.

‘I was putting him to bed. I had changed the sheets – he had peed on them – and when I bent over him he said, “Night, night. Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” which was something he said when I was little.

‘Then I went to wash his sheets and I just stood there and cried and cried and cried. You’re watching someone become a kid again, and it’s awful.

‘This is a long grief. I’m not afraid to say that I hope my father will quickly have a major stroke or heart attack so that he won’t have to suffer the disgrace of this terrible fall.’

Unfortunately, his father undoubtedly agreed.