"Tagging" is linked incontrovertibly in the public mind with criminals and dogs, so it is practically guaranteed to raise hackles when it is stated, as the Alzheimer's Society has done, that there are legitimate circumstances in which satellite tracking devices should be attached to people with dementia so that their carers might more easily trace them when they wander off.
But as I've argued before, used properly and appropriately, tagging in this way can be a helpful and positive thing.
Eight months ago, the then science minister Malcolm Wicks suggested there was nothing wrong with using tracking devices in this way. Assistive technology, as it is known, has the potential to liberate people, he argued. For this he got a good kicking from some parts of the media. The National Pensioner's Convention, I recall, called Wicks' idea "inhumane", and a cost-cutting substitute for proper care (as if introducing tagging would herald a new era of "virtual care" and enable the care home industry to lay off thousands of highly-skilled, highly-paid care workers).
Back then, the Alzheimer's Society was, I think, officially agnostic on the subject (though it was clearly sympathetic). What crystallised its thoughts on this, I'm not sure, but you can be certain that the charity won't have pronounced without listening carefully to its service users and carers, who, if their talkboard is anything to go by, are not merely acutely sensitive to the day-to-day anguish of living with (or alongside people with) dementia but a robustly pragmatic lot.
The concerns are primarily practical: is the technology cumbersome, is it waterproof, is it discreet (or will it make me look like a criminal out on bail?). There is discussion of the civil liberties implications: should tagging be allowed even if the tagged person is not able to give consent? Sometimes carers can seem, to the squeamish outsider, as a little indelicate and overbearing (such as the carer interviewed on Radio Four's Today programme yesterday morning who referred to the stress and worry involved when her husband "escaped" from home).
But it is comprehensible. I think I know what the carer means, and it wasn't about "locking up" her partner. Look at those talkboards again, and how see exactly how its contributors know all too well the pain, grief, fear, suffering and confusion of trying to cope with dementia in a loved one, or in oneself. Straight talking is part of the deal.
The Alzheimer's Society estimates there are currently around 700,000 people with dementia in the UK. Around 60% of them may wander off alone and unannounced, and of these 40% have got lost. In some cases they have died, or suffered serious accidents. In most cases they will have cause distress to family and carers. (There's an interesting website highlighting an NHS-backed GPS tracking systems service here.)
Degenerative brain disease is on the increase - around 1.75m people on the UK are likely to have demnetia by 2050. Dr Guy Brown recently offered a shocking, cautionary analysis of the implications of this in the pages of Society Guardian. Which is a roundabout way of saying that finding safe, innovative and user-friendly ways of helping us all manage dementia - like tagging, or "safe walking technology" as we should probably call it - is essential.
