My dad's experience of dementia wasn't the ‘gradual decline’ that's often used to describe the condition. With hindsight, he had started to have minor problems over a few months, but was living independently at home, and with no concerns about dementia, until he had a bad fall and ended up in hospital. He was there for four months, moved around between seven wards and three hospitals. I first realised he might have dementia when I visited him shortly after he was admitted. He thought he was at the steelworks where he had worked over 40 years earlier and wanted me to go into the office and get some paperwork he needed.

During the time he was in hospital, doctors would refer to dad's dementia, but no steps were taken to make a formal diagnosis – that only happened after he moved to a care home. Although I visited every other day, communication from the hospital was poor and the long stay certainly didn't improve his condition – physically or mentally. Support for me as his only close relative was non-existent. Early in his stay, there was an expectation that he would return home, possibly with adaptations to his house to accommodate his needs. But as time went on, it became clear this wasn't going to work.

Luckily, I had been doing research around dementia for a few years before this, in particular working with the Beth Johnson Foundation in Stoke-on- Trent and their peer support group for people with early- to mid-stage dementia, facilitated by dementia advocates. I’d learnt a lot from this group and had a much better idea than I might otherwise have done about what I was (and wasn’t!) looking for in a care home for my dad. Homes I looked at were certainly varied, but I was lucky in finding one close to home which seemed welcoming and where staff had a positive approach to dementia and to care more broadly.

My dad lived at Belong Village in Crewe for two years until he died in June 2020. During those years, we had some of the best times together we’d had for many years. After he was made redundant from the steelworks in the late 1970s, dad had a hardware shop where he worked until he was 79.