Dementia awareness week starts tomorrow on 19th May. When I think about ‘dementia’, I don’t think about government initiatives and new exciting ways to ‘raise awareness’. Raising awareness is good but only if we are raising awareness with a reason. Awareness isn’t enough. I’m an avowed cynic of the government’s ‘Dementia Challenge’ for many reasons but not least, the name. Dementia is not and shouldn’t be a ‘challenge’ any more than we need a ‘broken leg’ challenge or, to put it perhaps more honestly, an ‘age’ challenge. Fundamentally the language of ‘fighting’ dementia is embedded in an ageism that doesn’t recognise that dementia is a process and a range of symptoms that can look very different from person to person, family to family and society to society.

When I think about ‘dementia’, I think about the people I’ve had the privilege to work alongside as they experienced challenges of the…