DH doesn’t want to care for his elderly relatives

the answer there is to say that if she has capacity then you aren't sorting it!

They don't exist everywhere. Where mum lives Age UK only offer leaflets abd it's hard to even speak to someone on the phone. Where ILs lived Age UK were fantastic and really helped.

@godmum56 and then you get the GP saying on a Friday that mum has capacity to make her own decisions and the next Monday the surgery call to complain she hasn't turned up for a dressing change and telling me I need to sort it. Even though taking mum for a 3 times a week dressing change would take me at least 3.5 hours each time

Age UK Community Wardens could pop in every day or you could contact the LA about other agencies/micro-enterprises that can provide paid for care support for a variety of needs.

Parents didn't used to worry that their little ones would get run over because there were far fewer cars or that their teens would get sucked into county lines gangs because they didn't exist.

No, I suspect they more worried instead about the real possibility of their children dying young from drinking dirty water, cholera, typhus, typhoid, small pox, scarlet fever, sepsis….Have you looked at how many women practically had a child a year after marriage in the 18th or 19th centuries? They had families of 10, 12, 17, 23 children! My grandma was born in a “court house”, a poorly built slum where there could be 100 people to 2 privies? Her parents had 7 children and a lodger, living in 3 rooms.

I would have thought a pregnancy every year, and say 12 children to look after was pretty much a full time job, harder than working full time in an office today, and two children in the evenings?

If he doesn't want to physically care for them, he needs to sort out people who will.

That. You can't care for them from this distance and with your own disabled child. But someone needs to know that they're not managing, and step in.

Adult social care needs to know of their existence and their issues. If your DH can arrange appointments and go up there for a couple of days, it will save him an awful of trouble down the line.

I'd advise calling Age UK as a first step. Their advice line is spectacularly good, in my experience. They will explain what the relatives are entitled to and how to go about getting it.

There is also the issue of struggling to get a visit in the first place!!

@godmum56 exactly. It's amazing how often social services arrange to visit someone with no family present and take everything they claim they can do at face value. Even when it's previously been demonstrated that they don't.

That is how it SHOULD be everywhere but as many know, it is not. I think that the other thing is that obvs your reli agreed to it and many do not. I am glad it has worked out for you and yes there are things that the OP can do or attempt to do but its not always as easy as your experience.

I did this recently for a relative who lives an hour away following a couple of falls.

Contacted social services online and requested an assessment.
They came out in person ( due to elderly relatives previously refusing help over the phone ( phone call with social services). I made sure I was present at the appointment to discuss the finer details.

Equipment was discussed and provided. Grab rails, trolley etc...

Carers now come in twice a day although I'm not sure there's a lot of caring involved, more like a 1 minute welfare check.

A fall pendant was discussed and installed. We decided not to be first responders as we live too far away. So if another fall occurred, they would send someone round from their organisation.

Perhaps your DH should do something like what I've done.

We're 10 years in come February with the likelihood of many years to come. On top of working and our own children. Quite frankly I think we have done our time and need a break.

Sorry, quote fail. In response to "honour your parents and live in god's earth":

Lots of people aren't religious, for one thing.

Lots more see comments like that as convenient for the state to use to try to guilt trip people into being unpaid carers.

But people have more hours to work now than they used to. There's no SAHP unless you're rich. There's only a fixed amount of hours in the day, people can't use them twice and to try just leads to the carer becoming chronically ill too. Which helps nobody and solves nothing, only adding to the problem.

I'd say those are the main factors these days.

Also nobody lives nearby any more. A lot easier to do ad-hoc caring when you only live next door or a few streets away.

And people didn't linger like they do now. They were healthy and mostly capable until they got ill and died. Not lived seemingly forever in an increasingly frail body that was never designed to go on this long, being constantly patched up by modern medicine but never actually healthy, thriving or having quality of life.

People looked after their parents in the days when their own DC actually left home in adulthood (late teens/early 20's) so there was space.

With no state care the parents were, I expect, more grateful for family care and didn't bitch and moan and dig their heels in about having to leave their home and about how their DD/DIL (because let's face it, it would have 99% been women doing the caring) did things differently. Or if the parents did complain, the women carers sucked it up, having been trained from birth to expect to skivvy after others until they died or became infirm themselves. No expectations of anything different, of equality, of a life of their own at all. Family carers now won't tolerate being treated like servants by their infirm relatives.

Parents didn't used to worry that their little ones would get run over because there were far fewer cars or that their teens would get sucked into county lines gangs because they didn't exist.

When nobody moved too far away everyone knew everyone else, that's where "the village" to raise DC came from. And even troublesome people didn't "shit on their on doorstep" if they had any sense. Now people mostly don't know their neighbours and there's no sense of community.

It added up to DC being able to be outside the home more safely, entertaining each other and not getting under mum's feet whilst she cared for elderly relatives. Not stuck in front of a screen or needing attention every 5min, until they're about 30.

It's a different life now and expectations about care have had to change. It works both ways. Few grandparents are raising DGC whilst the children's parents work, even if it's a single parent household and where they are helping, the children's parents aren't necessarily grateful for the help but want to treat the DGP like staff. Don't forget the DGP are often still working when DGC come along too.

There's more awareness of the harm caused to DC by emotional abuse etc, and to the elderly by improper care practices that amount to some form of neglect, and to the carer in the form of bad backs and emotional burnout etc. People are taught from birth to (hopefully!) value themselves and their well-being and they're taught to expect good health and to expect to be able to enjoy life. Not to run themselves ragged with no end in sight. Even some branches of the state encourages us to put ourselves first and remain our healthiest, so as not to become a burden on it, whilst simultaneously telling us to work all hours. It's difficult enough to achieve both of those, especially whilst DC are young without adding caring for a disabled (or just plain ancient) person on top.

Times have changed, it's as simple as that.

Bollocks to neighbours being asked to do this. Are you smoking dope?
It is not their responsisiblty to have to be burdened with worrying about their neighbours every time they don’t see them for a few hours or days. They are not responsible for helping them off floor if they did find them there- you need professional Training for that .
just no.
Dont ever, ever do that to neighbours.

Granny rose implies you’re old enough to know better than to spout this crap emotional blackmail.

perosnally, if you haven’t cottoned on, that living long in the land gods given to you, these days, ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Give me quality of life over quantity these days. Too many people afraid to die younger, wanting the immortality with its dementia, immobiblty, disability that comes with it.

and never mind that for a lot of people, parents don’t get to be honoured by the edict of a religious statement, usually made in a patriarchal culture where actually that burden of honouring parents through care got dumped on the women . Always. Of course a church would say that. Honouring your parents starts with them honouring you as a child,

you know as well as I do that at the time the bible was written, that families lived locally, rarely straying form villages, that families were large with many siblings, that women in those cultures worked domestically or in the fields, that few older people lived much longer than they worked for , and that many families lived under one roof. A few falls like the aging dad and aunt would have probably finished them off back then, same as the first bout of UTI that older people succumb to so often.
care for elders was not restricted usually to one single child, it would have been spread amongst everyone in the household.

we do not live lives based on cultures that existed 2000 years ago, thank god. People live long lives, but not necessarily healthier ones, and that places huge social needs on society to care for those infirm or frail people,who live in their own homes by themselves.

sure, granny, go ahead and put that burden on your own sons and daughters . Have you told them this? Have they agreed? If so I assume they live locally with at least one of them not in full time employment . And hopefully they’ve got a gift for dealing with your personal attendance and nursing 24/7 without loosing their own mental well-being or resenting your entitlement over time,

you can be as naive as you want, I’m not. And most of us aren’t these days. I have a LPOA and a clear expression of wishes, and money set aside . I really, really dont want to go into care or a long term nursing home, but having seen my dear dad die of LBD, I recognise that it might well come to it and to plan accordingly if it does. My dc live their own lives, they don’t get burdened with managing mine just because I’m old and on my own.

Not sad at all. My responsibility, my promise, my obligation is to my husband and children in the first instance. My need to work to provide for my family is my obligation and responsibility.

Everyone needs to plan for the future and think about their possible care needs and that means having enough money to get paid care and potentially enough for a care home and not be dependent upon family. Also to be open to discussions that will benefit them when life becomes difficult. That is their obligation to their children who are already juggling careers and family.

This.
there are two issues to address. First, the immediate priority is why the hell are the neighbours involved? Ok, if a one off emergency fair do, but repeatedly? This isn’t fair on neighbours. Whoever is burdening them with it. It has to stop. If it is dad or auntie contacting them they have to be told to stop. They call ambulance or out of hours, or your dh. That’s it. If neighbours are involving themselves, they need a quiet but strong word to say that it is not an option for dh to care full time, and his dad and aunt need to come to terms with this and arrange appropriate care support . The neighbours are enabling unsafe behaviours that are preventing the vulnerable older relatives to take responsisiblty to get their act togther. Say it has to stop.

then secondly, a care assessment for both. Be clear that neither you not dh can support , you are already carers and have full time jobs and live away. Their needs need to be assessed professionally and ensure that they have access to any funding they’re entitled too. If they’re not entitled to funding, then they must be forced to understand they have to spend their own money now on care support . That means a bit of tough love. And some very straight talking.

while you’re at it, get LPOA done now. Urgently. For both of them. Don’t wait till it is too late.

dont be guilt tripped into carer roles. The shit people come out with who never been in that situation is powerful but irrelevant. Unless and until you’ve cared for someone 24/7/365 or even been on call 24/7 you’ve no right to presume what you’d be able to do in similar situation. Caring for someone , especially a relative, is one of the most difficult things…it changes previous relationships fundamentally, it alters the very dynamics. In some lovely rare cases it can work, but mostly it can lead to stress, mental I’ll health on part of carer (statistics are very bad if you look them up), or even, resentment . You have to be a very spepcifc type of person to do that , and one that has the time and lack of any other responsibilities.

as we get older, and I’m mid 60s, and find ourselves living on our own, we need to take accountability to have frank conversations with our children, review what we want and make some outline plans. And ensure we have, where possible, funding set aside. Too often older people bury their heads in the sand, feigning immortality to avoid taking difficult and frightening decisions related to becoming less independent. But the cold reality is we all must do it sometime.

Whether there’s a promise or not, most of us need to work to pay the bills.

@GrannyRose15 I come from three generations of atheists. There's no 'promise' there.

It's a little difficult to provide practical care for elderly relatives at a distance (their choice) when you work full time to pay the mortgage and have children at primary school.

It's a really hard situation, and we should all be really angry about the state of care services in this country (but we're too knackered to march on Whitehall, so just snip at each other instead). A pp poster referred to 'help services' but very often they're simply not there.

I've never cared for an elderly parent (I'm 60 and my gran is still living independently!) but I have spent some years caring for my ex, who developed Alzheimers at 50. It's been tough. There's a real lack of support for younger people with dementia - most care homes are a minimum age, and it took forever to find one that would take her. When she was in hospital they wouldn't let our dd visit because she's a minor. And her siblings, who have LPA, live abroad and do FA. So everyone rings me but I have no legal authority - all responsibility and no power.

OP, you shouldn't sign up to anything you can't reasonably do (and you need to be VERY clear to social care that you will NOT be providing caring services). But your dh does need to be part of the planning committee, I think. (If only to provide a clear picture of what he can and can't do.) I would start with the Age Concern website/helpline, then ask Adult Social Care to do a needs assessment.

If DH had spent the 7-8 years, that his father needed care, running up and down the country, he would have no job and our family would have no home.

I agree to some extent but in my case I've chosen to help my relatives by sorting out professional care help so they can continue to live independently. I also share part of the costs as this can be expensive and I'd rather pay £250 per month than be a part time carer myself.

You should see the weight that DB has lost since Dad died He died on 6th OCTOBER and DB has been round there every day since. But im sure we will be comforted by the fact that some fucking internet random thought he was a worthy son should he have a stroke or a heart attack due to the stress

DM is the one who emotionally abused my dad saying it was an STI and not prostate cancer when he was diagnosed. You have no fucking idea what goes on behind closed doors from your picture perfect picket fence attitude!!!

But the father and the aunt haven't actually asked for additional help! There's a difference between not honouring people and driving hours several times a week because a neighbour has decided there's a problem.

Isn’t it sad that so many people in this country think they have no responsibility towards elderly relatives and think that it is up to the state to provide and fund any support needed?
Whatever happened to “Honour thy father and thy mother that you may live long in the land the Lord has given you.” ?
There’s a promise there as well as an obligation.