Our care system failed my parents in their hour of need
In 2012, my mother was diagnosed with vascular dementia. Early in 2013, she qualified for continuing healthcare and this lasted for two years, during which she had 62 hours a week of good, regular carers (people with dementia need familiarity) and support from my father and me. In February 2015, my mother was reassessed by a ‘nurse assessor’ who had met her once, only briefly, and a social worker who had never met her before. After the assessment, they went outside for ten minutes and decided my mother no longer fitted the criteria for continuing healthcare and that it would cease in four weeks. Although there was a significant deterioration in my mother’s mental health, they claimed what she required was social care by Suffolk County Council, rather than NHS healthcare. Her care was reduced to just 11 hours a week and we were told any further hours she needed would have to be paid for by the family. I was working full-time, so this meant my 93-year-old father, frail and in poor health himself, had to pick up the shortfall in care. Within one week of this new arrangement, due to the withdrawal of NHS care and the neglect under Suffolk County Council, my mother’s health deteriorated rapidly and she died within seven weeks. My parents had been happily married for almost 69 years and worked hard all their lives for a comfortable retirement. They never claimed a penny in benefits but, in their twilight years, when they needed a bit of help, they were badly let down. Sadly, within 12 months of my mother’s passing, I lost my father. He died of a broken heart. I believe both the local NHS and Suffolk County Council have my parents’ blood on their hands. The end of their lives could have been so different.
JULIE DICKINSON, Lowestoft, Suffolk. COLUMNIST Sarah Vine says we, not the state, should look after our elderly parents (Mail) — an interesting thought. I was born in October 1937 and, like Sarah, grew up with three generations living together in one house: my grandparents, parents and I, an only child. I helped to look after my grandparents and then believed it my duty to look after my parents. I never married. Bringing a girlfriend home once was a disaster: one look at my elderly relatives and the girl ran a mile. My mother was the last to die, in 1996, and I traded in my grandparents’ house for a new bungalow in September 2003. I still have many female friends, but none would consider marriage to a man of nearly 80 years of age. Our family tend to live long: my mother died at 92, her mother was 92, my father’s mother survived pneumonia and lived to 97 and my mother’s elderly sister, aunt Mabel, reached 103. I’ve paid income tax and National Insurance since I was 16 and now expect the State to look after me: I have no surviving relatives. BRIAN J. J. JELF, Newport, Gwent.