‘So much of it is bureaucracy gone mad..’
Dad whose son is in care hits out at red tape
The father of a man confined to a Cambuslang care home after suffering brain damage has criticised the bureaucracy he has had to go through to help his son be cared for.
Murdo John MacKay, from East Kilbride, had just bought a house in Cambuslang eight years ago when he suffered oxygen starvation to his brain while asleep.
The freak accident left Murdo John, known as MJ, in a vegetative state, and in Hairmyres Hospital.
His father, also called Murdo, has faced persistent problems while caring for him, and has now spoken out in an attempt to highlight some of the problems that relatives caring for family members face.
He told the Reformer: “So much of it is bureaucracy gone mad. It’s about getting boxes ticked and it feels that the resident is almost an inconvenience.”
Issues faced by Mr MacKay include difficulties with an application for guardianship of his son, and trying to find a suitable care home for his son.
Eventually he settled on Flemington Care Home, and was told that funding was in place between Lanarkshire Health and Social Care Partnership and the Flemington Road facility. Three days before his son was supposed to move there, from Hairmyres Hospital, he received a phone call saying this was not the case.
Mr MacKay explained: “I’m not getting any younger, and he needs somewhere where he can be loved, warm and comfortable and Flemington fits that criteria. I asked the financial people if the funding was in place and they assured me that it was categorically in place.
“He was scheduled to move on Monday, August 28 and they knew that this was going to happen for five months. On the Friday afternoon I got a phone call to say they were disputing the fees.
“It placed me and the care home in a very awkward position. I was on holiday in Jura on the Friday, and by the Monday they had cleared his room out at Hairmyres. I called a halt to the move, but I don’t think the timing was an accident or an coincidence.”
After a string of meetings, the issue was resolved. Thankfully, Mr MacKay has only good things to say about the care home itself.
“There is a kindness there. It’s the little things there, like the nurses buying him the occasional DVD that helps get a reaction from him. They have helped find out what he responds to, and that means so much to me.”
Susan Friel, chief of nursing services atUniversity Hospital Hairmyres, said: “Any decision to move a patient from hospital into the community is made in collaboration with the family or carer and, in complex cases such as this, involve multi-disciplinary working across the care team including social work staff as well as all clinical staff.
“Patients are only ever moved when it is clinically safe to do so, a community care assessment has been undertaken and their destination has been agreed.
“It is important that patients have the right care, in the right place, at the right time and for those patients who require long term care and support, this is more appropriately provided within a homely setting.
“We regret any instance where an individual feels that we have failed to provide the highest standards of care and we are always happy to discuss