Earlier this year we launched our report, Dementia - the true cost: Fixing the care crisis. Published in May, the report is based on testimony and evidence from people affected by dementia, social care professionals and dementia lead nurses. The report highlights how people living with dementia are enduring inadequate care and crippling costs.

Successive governments have shirked the issue of our threadbare social care system. People with dementia are now forced to rely on services so starved of funding that they’re unable to protect them from harm and keep them from the doors of A&E, let alone provide specialist care and support. An Alzheimer’s Society investigation discovered that 50,000 people with dementia were admitted to A&E across the country in the last year, because inadequate social care is leaving them unprotected from falls and infections. This is a 70 per cent increase in the past five years, which tallies with cuts in social care funding.

The Government must work out how it will deliver high quality social care to everyone with dementia who needs it, and at a fair price. This summer brings a key opportunity, in the form of a green paper on social care reform. We're calling on the Government to end the inequality and deliver the change that people affected by dementia deserve.

We want to see action on:

- Cost - the cost of extra care charges for a health condition such as dementia must be covered by the state.

- Quality - all health and social care workers must be given the training and support they need to deliver quality dementia care.

- Access - everyone with dementia should have a care navigator to support access to timely, preventative and integrated support.

There are 2,681 people living with dementia in Harrow and this number is expected to rise. Alzheimer’s Society wants to encourage everyone to unite against dementia and take action to help fix dementia care across the borough. Find out how you can take a small action to make a big difference and help fix dementia care at www.alzheimers.org.uk/daw.

- Helen Green is London Media Officer for the Alzheimers Society