Care homes are so lonely if your carers don’t speak good English

IKNOW what it’s like to live in a care home — or God’s Waiting Room as some of my companions with a rather dry sense of humour called it. I was there for respite care

as a result of the horrible fall that fractured one of my vertebrae in November.

I was able to come and go as I pleased and my son came often to take me out. But I still spent many a lonely hour in my room, beginning to understand what it must be like for the women in their late 80s and 90s who are full-time residents.

Many were utterly dependent on carers, for basic personal care, to pick them up from their rooms, help them to the dining room, then return them when lunch or dinner was done.

Fortunately, when I was in a care home, I could get in and out of bed with relative ease. I was able to take myself to the bathroom, do my hair, put on some make-up, dress as nicely as I felt was required and toddle off down the corridor to a little breakfast room where coffee, boiled egg and toast were delivered.

Generally, I ate breakfast alone, gazing out of the window to the garden where a fox and a few squirrels would wander around.

But oh, how I longed for company! Eventually Jane, a widow in her early 90s, would join me for an hour or so. Beautifully dressed, she was full of stories of her old jobs in the civil service, a miserable marriage, lovers, and sons who never came to see her.

Then along came Mary, also in her 90s and spectacularly fit. She lost her parents as a young woman when they died in 1963 in the Lakonia disaster. The cruise ship caught fire at sea and 128 people died.

Mary had intended to join them on the cruise, but stayed at home instead. On the anniversary, December 22, she quietly remembered her parents.

Neither of the women stayed very long for our daily chats. I think they found them quite exhausting and needed to go back to their rooms for a rest.

As the days passed slowly, I spent a great deal of time by myself. I can’t deny I became very downhearted, even though I had so much more going on than my fellow residents.

The evenings were the worst. Dinner was early, from 5.30-6.30pm in care home.

I would be the only one still up and awake by 8 o’clock. The carers and highly qualified nurses were generally busy with the residents who needed help preparing for the night.

There were two carers on my floor who spoke perfect, colloquial English and were up for a chat.

They were both married with husbands who clearly earned a decent wage. They were not too desperate to earn a lot of money themselves.

Their children were grown up enough not to need Mum at home all the time.

One or other of them would pop into my room with a cup of cocoa around 9pm and we’d talk about families, TV shows, the news and most importantly, why they loved their jobs.

They did them, they said, because they loved caring for old people who really needed their help.

They were not in it for the money but for the sheer joy of making someone’s life better.

My mother had a similar experience when she spent her last year in a care home with paralysing Parkinson’s disease.

In her first months the carers were women like her — down-toearth women who were good for a gossip and a laugh. Then two young Polish women were hired who didn’t speak English. ‘I can’t understand them and they can’t understand me,’ Mum wailed.

This has to be fixed. It’s important that carers speak good English.

Talking is part of the job. Better pay and training must be put in place and the young taught how much care matters to society. We need to ensure that these people are not living a life that’s as miserable for them as it is for the elderly in their care.