CARE HOMES
Looking after loved ones
When parents and elderly relatives need support or care, where do you start and how can you help them get the best outcome without compromising your own wellbeing? GH consumer affairs director (and daughter) Caroline Bloor shares her story and explains the options
‘FINDING MY MUM A CARE HOME HAS BEEN A LONG JOURNEY’
‘It’s hard to describe what it feels like moving a parent into care. For my sister and I, the process started over a year ago with a day of visits to all the care homes in the area. In a word, it was grim, but it highlighted to us the vast range on offer – from reassuringly good to depressingly awful.
The issue came to a head last summer when our 83-year-old mum fell for the sixth time in a year and broke her hip in four places. It was pinned and plated and she was discharged 10 days later into an NHS intermediate-care unit near home. After 10 weeks there, social services carried out what we felt was a pointless, in-home assessment. They decided that returning home alone and housebound, with a still-healing hip, worsening dementia, 14 medications every day, negotiating steps with a tray on a walking frame, and having to use a commode in her sitting room by her bed was no obstacle to independent living. It seemed like lunacy, but we were advised we had to go through the process if she was to get any ongoing support.
We felt naively optimistic when an
enablement team carried out observation (and they were really just ‘observing’) three times a day. Frustratingly, when Mum was asked if she’d washed, eaten or taken her medication, she responded yes ‘because it was simpler’. Confined to downstairs, unable to walk without a frame and despite the evidence that food and tablets were regularly missed, the assessors concluded that she didn’t qualify for a care package. It felt as if we’d been left high and dry.
The next three weeks passed in a blur of unsustainable daily visits from my sister, before and after she went to work, to shop, cook, clean and give medication, and with me doing the hour and a half round trip twice at weekends to help. We all lived in fear of another fall on the still-broken hip. When the inevitable fall happened, we decided a care home was our only option. To fund this, we are having to sell her house. At over £1,000 a week, the money will run out in under five years – at which point we must reapply for state funding.
It’s been a big upheaval for Mum but the important thing is that she’s happy and safe, with regular food, medication, company and support. For us, it’s a relief: we feel like we’re doing our best for her. Although the only safe outcome for my mum was residential care, there are other options, including support to stay at home where this is appropriate.’