TODAY is the first day in a week-long series of special reports by the Evening Mail on the crisis surrounding care for dementia in the south of Cumbria.

Families have been torn apart as loved ones with the condition are moved to specialist units outside of the area due to a lack of appropriate beds.

Today we look at the growing cost of dementia care and the problems to keep up with the demand.

Tomorrow's coverage will focus on dementia care beds and the historical shortage of them.

CUMBRIA is in the midst of a dementia crisis as health agencies struggle to keep up with rocketing numbers of diagnosed patients.

Millions of pounds of the county's health and social care budget is being spent on providing packages of care for people with the degenerative disease.

And a shortage of nursing home places for people in the advanced stages of the condition is forcing the separation of couples and families when placements are found often miles away from home.

Janice Horrocks, deputy director of mental health and learning disability commissioning for Cumbria's Clinical commissioning Group, explained dementia care is fast becoming one of the most difficult to manage health issues in the country.

"In Cumbria we are actually working to find out the exact numbers of beds for people in the advanced stages of dementia so that we can assess the level of provision we have.

"It's an incredibly complex system however because these many of these places are provided by the independent sector."

Mrs Horrocks added: "Last year, we diagnosed 67.8 per cent of the number of people expected to have dementia in Cumbria.

"This is a good proportion, because it unlocks help and care services for both the sufferer and their families.

"But that still leaves a gap and the overall number of people with dementia is set to rise."

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There are currently 5,000 people in Cumbria with a confirmed diagnosis of dementia, a lifelong disease for which there is no cure.

The net cost of provide care for the elderly cost Cumbria County Council £119 million last year and is expected to increase by £10 million a year if the same pattern of services is provided in the future.

However health bosses claim the overall bill for dementia care for the county - in terms of hospital beds, nursing and care home places and community care packages - is not quantifiable.

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Dr David Storm, dementia specialist and senior clinical services manager at the Cumbria Partnership NHS Trust, said: "The number of people who come into our units for assessment is now small comparatively and they present at a much more advanced stage showing patients are staying in their own homes for longer.

"The problem is that often the beds we need for people with advanced dementia are blocked by those who could be stepped down to less intensive care.

"Sometimes we do need to find a place out of county for a patient. If we had a 20 bed unit in Cumbria providing specialised care, we would probably struggle to recruit enough staff to run it.

"We need to get a better throughflow of patients established to improve the system we have got."

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