If reports are accurate, I really welcome the call by the Archbishop’s Commission on care ‘for much greater emphasis on and resources for communities in providing social care.’ I was shocked, when researching a paper I wrote last year, to find that 50 percent of people living with dementia hadn’t drawn on any community-based support at all. That is a story of people and families struggling alone at a cost to their health and wellbeing, until they reach crisis point, with hospitalisation and institutional care often the inevitable, unwanted result.

But my heart immediately sank when reading in the Guardian that ‘after visiting Woodside Care Village, a purpose-built and designed care home for people with dementia, (the Commission) concluded: “When we put the right environment around people living in institutional settings, they can thrive in the community.”’

This is double-speak. People living in institutional settings are not ‘thriving in…