Dementia is on the rise, with more than one million people expected to be living with the disease in the next ten years.

How carers treat those with the condition is coming under the spotlight as the ageing population increases and one person is diagnosed with dementia worldwide every seven seconds.

Horrific footage shown on the BBC1 Panorama programme last night showed how one woman, Maria Worroll, living at a care home in London was treated at the hands of those entrusted with her care.

She was so badly treated that one care worker was charged with assault and an additional four were sacked.

Her daughter had been so worried she installed a hidden camera in her mother’s room.

Paul Edwards, head of training and practice development and a senior lecturer with the Bradford Dementia Group at Bradford University, was invited to watch the footage and provided expert advice on the programme.

Mr Edwards said that although the Panorama footage horrified him, he feared it wasn’t an isolated incident. He said more needed to be done to educate those in care homes treating our most vulnerable.

“The footage was pretty horrific and I saw it in its unabridged form,” he said.

“The bottom line is abusive practice going on needs to be dealt with in the courts. What we see in this footage is a lady with dementia receiving pretty appalling care.

“Care workers are not paying any attention to her as a person and moving her in a rough and inhumane way.”

So why does this situation happen?

“Generally there is a lack of knowledge and an underinvestment in our care sector about the experience of dementia and how it affects people,” said Mr Edwards.

“There is a lack of moment by moment checking of what goes on in care practices. People think the care is fine when the cared for are smiling when they are not actually looking at the everyday.

“Also, in the field we are in, it is pretty easy to get a job in a care home and they don’t always invest in staff knowledge. People learn values on the job.

“Also the expectations on care workers are much higher than what they deliver and we expect care workers to be superhuman and give them no support.

“But there is no excuse for abusive behaviour. But I don’t think we have the right kind of support for care workers on the ground or the right kind of leadership.”

Mr Edwards said that whistleblowing practices needed to be encouraged so staff could raise concerns.

“The overarching fact is still that we do not value people with dementia enough in society,” he said.

“Care practices are part of society and we do not always address and value our society. We don’t encourage or speak to those with dementia or treat them as a human being.”

He cited the example of care workers speaking over the head of a dementia sufferer as if they were not there.

“We need to remember that those with dementia are human beings, they have hearts, eyes, ears and brains like the rest of us, and we need to treat them with love and dignity,” he said.

Mr Edwards will hold a public lecture about understanding people with dementia, taking place at the University of Bradford tomorrow from 6pm.