Julie Hayden is a dementia activist and the author of Living With Young Onset Dementia. As a ‘Dementia Rebel’, she’s been pushing dementia into the national conversation. So what would she do if she was prime minister for the afternoon?
If you suddenly found yourself in high office, what’s the first thing you’d want to fix?
On achieving high office, my big issue would be to establish a national, unified dementia pathway which offered truly person-centred support from diagnosis to end of life for all people living with a diagnosis and their families. Too much dementia care is fractured (often split between older people’s services/mental health/frailty teams) and operates under a postcode lottery.
What was the big political issue you remember from your youth? How did it impact you?
The main political event which occurred during the last of my schooldays was when Margaret Thatcher became our first female prime minister. This should have meant a major advance in women’s rights, but instead she took the position that as she had had to struggle to succeed, why shouldn’t the rest of us! I went on to train as a nurse and saw firsthand how her government set about demolishing our NHS.
What would your leadership style be?
