If you care for your parent, what do you on a daily basis?

For example, I have three ds who each have their own needs.

I will not be asking anything of them as I age as they have their own lives. I would far rather go into a home and not be a bloody burden to them.

I think you are doing way too much. Surely you could buy ping meals for your Mum and she could heat them in the microwave?

She could use the attendance allowance to pay for a cleaner and gardener.

If she is still mental active, she should be arranging her own appointments.

It sounds as though she is happy to lean on you with absolutely no thought to your quality of life.

Plenty of people grow old without a daughter to come every day and spend hours doing stuff.

Well good luck with getting advice from Mumsnet op. You've put up a barrier to every single suggestion. Perhaps you just wanted a good old moan.

DM is 80, house bound (would never leave the house alone as she can barely walk and cannot walk unaided). She’s full of arthritis, in generally poor health.
I’ve just been there five hours gardening- doing little things her gardener doesn’t do to her specifications. Little jobs she can’t reach or would find very difficult. She does try to pay me, she is very comfortable but I don’t take it as I work and earn well.

DM is in constant pain, but she will do all she can to keep active. She gets up and into the bathroom, takes her two hours to bathe and get ready. (She would never let me help her with personal care if she can help it).
She does her own washing, will run the vacuum over, wash up, these tasks will take her literally hours to complete. She will rest throughout the day. She won’t just sit around, even though movement is painful.

Could your DM do a little more than she does OP?

Would she have to move in to residential care if you could no longer care for her?

This is the message you need to keep hammering home to everyone who will listen.

Everyone is happy for you to shoulder the burden but what if something happens to you? You might get Covid, or break your leg and you simply won't be able to help, and there needs to be some sort of back up system in place to take over.

In any case, you need respite from having to do this every day, it's just not sustainable. Can you get someone to come in twice a week?

Is there a carers group near you? It might be worth joining for support and advice. Adult social care should be able to help although they are very overstretched everywhere. I've also heard that the Red Cross is quite helpful, look on their website.

I agree with getting a Care Assessment under the Act. I have had to have this for myself, and we can all help you prepare for it and do it.

I will not have my adult DC give up their lives for my care. We:

1 Buy it in as far as possible;
2 Make sure I have the tech to do as much for myself as possible (phone, laptop);
3 Ask as little of them as possible - them sorting out some meals and housework for me is brilliant when I'm not doing so well;
4 Draw on the available resources (via the NHS and Local Authority) as much as possible, e.g. the GP practice's social prescribers, adult social care services community physio;
5 Claim PIP / Attendance Allowance and all related benefits

However I appreciate that your mum is older than me. But nevertheless you cannot give up your life like this when you have a young child. When I was younger and active I gave up a lot for my father but declined to do it full-time as I had young DC. We settled on one full day a week from me.

Ring adult social services and ask for an assessment for carers to go in and do it.

Everything that Mossstitch said! 👍

‘you’re supposed to be my carer’ ??? Is that the sum of your life on this earth ? Will you say this to your children? Is that what you brought them into the world for?

You have only one life and that life is important, your life has value and keep repeating that .

Find a balance that helps your mum but where you are ‘you’ and not devoting your life to someone else , family or not . No amount of money is worth unhappiness. Get a part time job. Can your mum not get some care from the NHS?

Can she use the internet at all or is that a non-starter? Ring up for her prescriptions? Accept a delivery at the door?

What can she do? What does she do?

Does it matter what others do? You're doing too much. It's demanding all of your time. You don't want to continue. Even if the whole world was doing five times more so what?
You can decide what you're happy to do, and proceed with that

@FaultybutFabulous my mother had attendance allowance for years without ever using it for 'care'. She stashed it away in savings whilst I tried to fit in taking her shopping ect with three kids and fulltime work. She actually drove me back to work after I took early retirement with her excessive demands for attention! That remark 'your supposed to be my carer' would have finished it for me, who else puts in that level of work for less than £2 per hour.......... It's a disgrace how carers are treated and usually women.

You don't have to be there for her to get attendance allowance, the small print says that is paid for their need whether they actually use it to pay for care or not (I work with a lot of elderly patients who get it but refuse to use it for the purpose intended, ie carers to relieve their poor children of some of the burden of looking after them, some elderly people get rather selfish/self centered and expect too much, usually from daughters🙄).
I don't know anything about UC but I did get carers allowance at one point which if I remember rightly was the grand total of £235 per month, I certainly did not tot up the hours I was there with her and nobody is going to check up on you!! Everybody is entitled to some time off in a week, I think you are doing too much. If she can physically manage with ready meals ect then you need to take some days off........ Personally if you can I would go to work and get her assessed from social services fir carers, you are entitled to a life of your own!! 💐

Oh well ask the nearby sibling to give you a break occasionally then.

Is it worth whatever UC top-up you get to spend 35 hours a week caring? That's a full time job.

Maybe there's an age element to attendance allowance but my Mum's doesn't seem to be means tested at all.

What does she mean "you're supposed to be my carer"?

Is the other sibling totally estranged from you both?

My mum is 91 and pretty much housebound (she can't go out alone) and has paid carers for an hour twice a week to give her a shower. She refuses to have more than this and can and does shower herself but can't do her hair on her own. Her food shopping is online (my brother helps her with this) and she gets frozen ready meals delivered by one of those food delivery companies. There isn't much life admin to handle but she does it, with occasional help from me or my brother. If her toaster broke, for instance, we'd get her a new delivered by Amazon.

She spends her attendance allowance on a fortnightly cleaner and some gardening in the summer.

She speaks to me, my brother, my cousin on the phone about weekly, occasionally more often (I rang her this week when the Queen died as I knew she'd be upset) and has a neighbour and local friend who look in on her.

Your mother sounds WAY TOO DEPENDENT on you. Why on earth are you there for 3 hours every day? If she has extreme physical needs she should be having nursing care at home surely. If you lived hours away she'd have no choice.