TODAY the full council meeting of Inverclyde Council takes place.

Although the council is governed by various committees, around every six weeks every councillor meets at this meeting which effectively acts as the supreme decision making body of the council.

Quite often due to the special status of this meeting various outside parties will contact councillors to propose items and councillors will also propose motions for a specific action to take place.

Quite often robust debate follows. However it is also common for consensus on various topics. For example earlier this year the full council agreed to a motion I submitted to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Greenock Blitz.

Inverclyde’s Provost seconded this motion showing that on such occasions politics is left to the side. Today will be – I hope – another such occasion as we debate whether or not to support ‘Frank’s Law.’

Frank’s Law is a campaign named after the former Dundee Utd footballer Frank Kope, who was diagnosed with dementia aged 59.

The campaign states that anyone under the age of 65 who requires personal care for their dementia, or indeed other conditions such as motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, cancer (or any other degenerative brain disease) has to fund the cost of the care themselves.

That person, will, in all probability through no fault of their own, have lost their job and their income, is yet to reach pension age and their carer, usually a family member, will too have given up their job to care for their loved one.

However, for those over the age of 65, that personal care is free. But no disability, illness, condition or disease waits until a person reaches the age of 65, then strikes.

I will be supporting Mrs Kopel’s request that Inverclyde supports her campaign, and I wish her well.

The campaign has given me time to reflect on what we are currently doing in Inverclyde regarding dementia. There are 1,489 people with dementia in Inverclyde – 469 men and 1,020 women.

This number is expected to double over the next two decades, and by the year 2050 there could be nearly 4,500 in Inverclyde living with dementia.

These figures mean that although the team at Alzheimer Scotland in Greenock are doing an absolutely amazing job, with our population getting older we need to make sure that the building blocks are in place for decades to come.

At the moment Reid McLaughlin of Inverclyde Council – supported by Tracey Gilmour of the local Alzheimer Resource Centre – has been working hard to put Gourock on course to become the first town in Inverclyde to become dementia friendly.

Inverclyde’s dementia friendly strategy aims to ensure people living with the condition, as well as their families and carers, receive the best possible support, feel included and remain part of their community for as long as possible.

I want to see Inverclyde become a dementia friendly local authority and this will be delivered over the course of the next council elected in May so that we can put those essential building blocks in places for our future generations.