DM wants a riser-chair costing £4.5k! Advice v welcome

Yes, I had to do this for mum. I’d not dealt with the finances for mum before, but had had to provide copies of the health and welfare LPA to deal with hospital, GP and other organisations. It was a nightmare because some wanted authorised copies, which can be expensive. When I came to deal with the bank, they advised that they no longer needed a full paper copy as the YouGov website provides a service for the attorney to open an account and upload details of the LPA’s from online records. You can then generate a code to give each organisation who need to view the LPA, and each time it’s viewed the service records who has accessed it and the date and time. It’s a vast improvement.

The carer is being, at the very least, unprofessional and quite possibly grooming your mother who is vulnerable. If you decide to change carer, be prepared that she will stay in contact with your mother and continue to exert influence because your mother considers her a friend and you’re the nasty, unfair daughter. The rot may have already set in.

What strikes me me most about @Valleyofthedollymix posts is the judgmental language and tone oozing from every post and resentment that her mother has so much money she doesn't 'deserve' when OP wasn't lavished with it herself

"inherited money"

"not a pension or money she's earnt"

"most of it came from inheriting a very large house (larger even than the one she's currently living in)"

"they were so parsimonious growing up - like I got no maintenance money at university, we never went on holiday, we barely got given birthday presents"

"the more crap that gets bought from the internet, the more decluttering will fall to me"

"yes it is her money, but money she's inherited and I don't think her hardworking ancestors would want it pissed away like this"

"it just feels incredibly wasteful and consumerist"

"we can all recognise that high you can get from an internet delivery (which in my case is followed by a sense of disgust)"

"I don't know that I can forgive her lack of compassion towards my dad"

I think @Valleyofthedollymix - difficult as it may may - needs to separate her own deep rooted feelings of judgment and resentment with what's in her mother's interests and happiness

These are carers who are paid a rate for a full day, not an hourly rate.

The expectation is that they will be able to sleep overnight.

There would be no need for two carers unless the client needed care at night.

I used to do it privately and charged £100 a day ten years ago. I was self employed.

Carers Allowance is £71 a week.
A daily live in carer is anything between £120 - 300 a day.

PIP is not payable after state pension age.

Attendance Allowance is £68.10 a week.

if mother can afford it, why not if it makes her happy?

Because P0A is there for a reason- for when someone has lost capacity to make their own decisions. Your logic is absolutely sound when applied to someone with that capacity, but this doesn’t apply here. Take the example someone gave upthread about their father with dementia who would keep eating oranges because he’d forgotten he’d just had one, eventually making himself ill. So people hid food from him; they didn’t take the view “if that’s what he fancies, let him eat it.” As a pp rightly said, if this is a symptom of the disease, then OP needs to look at it.

I think how the OP’s mum was before is relevant here. If, like my own mother, she has always been parsimonious and penny pinching, then it’s reasonable to assume that the change to reckless spending behaviour is down to the dementia. And it’s OP who needs to ensure that the money is there to pay for care longer term. And it’s a hellishly difficult call. A financial advisor once said to me, “I don’t want to sound like I’m asking you when you think your mother will die…..”; I laughed grimly and said he was, but I knew there was no way round it! I’m in a similar (but less difficult) position to the OP and that’s the nub of the problem. My mother could be dead within the year; she could last another 15. If your life needs are costing £30/40/60k for each of those years, the former is a very different scenario from the latter in financial terms. And OP will be the person who faces the stress of managing that money and, when it runs out, convincing social services that her mother has complex needs that require the cash strapped local authority to pitch in. It’s easy to judge and shout “inheritance grabber” when you aren’t in that position….

I get full PIP and used to work for the disability benefits office.
It doesn't matter what your income is and it pisses me off that there is a perception that rich people can't be disabled.
She needs it for her dementia, not just to fund a chair.
FFS, the regular ignorance and disablism on MN is horrific.

It seems possible that the carer does this shopping for an easy life?

The carer should not have access to the credit cards.
That's the issue.

It's also not the carer's role to 'have an easy life'.
She shouldn't be spending the money of a client with dementia when her family are unhappy about it.

I hope the OP has had a wake up call and decided to put the brakes on this by cutting up the cards, applying for new ones, and taking control of the spending.

I thought - if you have power of attorney - you can take control of all the finances if you judge that your parent eg because of dementia is not competent to make sound financial decisions.

OPs mother clearly IS wealthy and I think the 6 cashmere sweaters in a week is likely an exaggeration but, even if it's not, if mother can afford it, why not if it makes her happy?

Is it hard to understand what's going on?

@Elfblossom

The issue is not the money as such, but her mum's judgement. People with dementia lose their sense of judgement and this buying of too many things is an example of that. Did you read she also has 200 scarves with labels on them still?

This is her ILLNESS - it's not about being able to afford them.

The real issue is that her carer is facilitating all of this as she buys them on the Mum's credit cards.

Oh gosh, I'd be really concerned too. She's not frittering bits and pieces - that's a lot of money for things she's not using. I would definitely take action to curb the reckless spending. It sounds like the enjoyment is the spending but then she doesn't enjoy what she's bought, so that's not healthy.

My DM is 86 with dementia. She is becoming irrational about spending - not on that scale, and she lives with my dad, which helps a lot, but it's noticeable. We can't go in a gift shop without her buying soap and a gift for the grandkids. Harmless at the mo (although she is hoarding the soap, always thinks she's run out, and the gifts aren't usually appropriate) but still hard to control. She also wants to buy expensive blouses, which are cold and impractical, so she has dozens of those and not enough practical clothes, meaning the heating has to blast high and she struggles when she goes out. It is very hard to reason with her now and she gets angry if my dad suggests she has enough blouses. It's the same with shoes. They are not broke but my dad is careful with money and I'm sure would rather spend it on other things. It's more the fact she buys things that don't suit her then struggles she has nothing warm to wear / no comfy shoes!

If the Op's mum is spending 2k a week on carers in her home I'm not sure a few cashmere jumpers & some smoked salmon is what will make the difference to any inheritance!

It seems possible that the carer does this shopping for an easy life?

Perhaps if the stuff isn't really wanted (just the pleasure of opening & maybe trying on?) she should also be returning it?

There is no way she'd get PIP @motheronthedancefloor
A friend of mine with multiple sclerosis, (who's only in her 40s) had to fight for it.

You can't get PIP just because you fancy a type of chair when you can still walk up and down stairs.

Honestly, it's 'advice' like this that just confuses things.

Have you read the thread? Her mother is very well off.

She doesn't need money. She is spending it willy-nilly because of her dementia.

Also, carers allowance is dependent on the care that someone provides and there are very struct criteria around it.

Does she get attendance allowance or PIP? You could put an application in and this can increase her income. You could also try for carers allowance and use that for carer salary and get a better one.

It gave my mother such pleasure buying Lancome and Clarins products she didn't need and would never be able to get through - specifically when there was a promotion and she'd get a bonus toiletry bag with x8 samples of other products. She loved the thick card bag with its cord handles , the items wrapped in tissue paper, the cartons came in and then reading the little minuscule print leaflets that accompanied them. Was it a waste of money? - objectively yes, in terms of the pleasure it gave her, a resounding no.

Incidentally, I no longer see this type of promotion - seems main,y to be a discount on items and not the little bundle of the 'free gift'

Excellent post

I genuinely feel this is about OP's inheritance. Maybe subtly encourage her to buy things with resale value for after she dies – many luxury brands have high resale value.

Everyone is different. My mil was diagnosed with mixed dementia at 78. She lived (with us) until she was 92. Many times we, and the doctors thought her time had come, but she just kept going.

I'm sorry for your early losses. It is true then that you won't ever have to go through those older years then, though I'm sure you'd love to have that 'problem'. If it makes her happy, she can do whatever she wants with her money. I'm just at the stage where I'm coming to terms with my parents eventually needing to wear the consequences of decisions they have made over the years, and that I don't have unlimited wealth with which to bail them out.

"She was furious when I cut the live-in carers from two to one"

If she's got a full time live in
care package the company will be getting next to nothing.

£2k a week for 24 hour care for a full week works out it's approximately 11 pounds 90 per hour. Considering overnight stays which are normally charged it's a higher rate than a dairy rate and only two carers to cover 24 hour shifts I would say that's pretty cheap. Unless I've misunderstood what you mean by live in carers.

We got a second hand one from the local mobility shop in about 2002. My dad used it happily for around 10 years until he died, another relative has it now and it is still going strong 10 years later. It is an electric recliner/ riser. It cost about £1200 at the time.

I thought that even with POA you need to justify spending another's money to the OPG which function as a check. Don't you have to supply annual accounts? You have a responsibility as she lacks capacity but there is presumably still a check on that responsibility, yes?

pay her to say to your mother 'she is moving away because of family affairs'

For crying out loud . . . don't be ridiculous.

THIS

If the carer was rude, it suggests that she is behaving inappropriately and knows it.

Not to say that she is dishonest (though she may be) but that she is encouraging your DM to buy things she doesn't need - perhaps they both get a shopping "buzz".

Your DM won't want to change though - she'll regard this woman as her "friend" - someone much nicer to her than you are, because the carer indulges her.