Cockroach cafe - Spring to Summer 2026

Just musing here that there’s no way I could have lifted her alone. How do people get dead bodies into the boots of cars in TV dramas etc?

I’ve just been googling the local NHS falls policy because I would have had to call an ambulance if DB wasn’t available and there was no real need for it.

4am call from DMs lifeline. She was on the floor. Unhurt thankfully. I couldn’t lift her so had to call my brother to help and between us we got her into bed.

Feeling a bit discombobulated today.
I've got a training session soon, but its not that.
It's how easy I'm finding living like my siblings have for the past decade...
I pop in to see mum twice a week (until I start work, anyway..)
We chat, I ask if she needs anything (answer is usually no) and then I leave and I don't think about her at all until the next visit or if she texts me.
It's been revelatory.

Pad situation is being resolved. The first nurse didnt know what he was talking about (claiming DM should be personally contributing pads to a common stock). He is a bit of a 'know it all'.

Second nurse does understand funding so is on the case though it will take a couple of weeks to resolve.

I've reported it to the carers .

@BestIsWest it’s all bad enough , isn’t it, really feel for you with all the extra sorted needed from your accident.

@ElderlyDilemmas I have POA for 3 older people and my saintly chap too. Luckily all but the one are completely self sufficient, long may this last.

Apparently the "carers haven't been following the meal plan" FFS why do I bother. (Yes, she can speak just fine, in case you wondered).

It so happens that my own meds have changed, and as a side effect I am more emotional. Good in some ways, but irritability, frustration and rage are also emotions.

I'm sure a lot of us here are familiar with the vicious circle of the relative actively or passively sabotaging attempts to help them...so you think, well, why bother visiting/engaging at all... But if you disengage, a crisis just so happens and you are worse off than where you started.

Thank you. Sorry about the leg, hope it improves again soon. Yes, I think I will have to ask for the letters and mark them up as Paid or whatever when I go round, I do try and go every weekend, but sometimes the visits are short because I have to visit Dad separately at the CH, and then sometimes I miss things. Fortunately I have access to both their emails. Mum gets SO many every day, mostly marketing, it's easy to miss things, she never deletes any.

Mum’s home uses an app to track personal spends, so I get to see every time money comes out and what it is for. The home provides toiletries and pads, so it’s mainly podiatrist and dentist and days out when she was able. I don’t have to top it up very often, she’s not a big spender.

My mum has been in a care home almost three years and I have never seen a list of her personal expenditure. I used to pay £200 a time although never probably more than once every 4-5 months and, in comparison to the weekly fees it was nothing so I decided to just never ask unless the request to top it up came too frequently and it never did. I wondered if some of the activities, singers and trips she went on - there was an annual daytrip to the seaside in groups of 6 in a minibus - involved her contributing for craft materials or the minibus but I just decided not to sweat the small stuff. Mum was happy and I could see her hair was being regularly cut.

They should be itemising it, ours is split out into things like hairdressing, toiletries, chiropody.

Mum is just wasting away tbh 😕
But there's not much they can do if its age related cachexia.
I don't really comment anymore because she gets angry.
Other than take her treats/things she's likely to eat, not much I can do.
She hasn't been dressed since she got home from hospital...she just wears pj's all the time, sleeps and watches TV.
I'm realising it's unlikely she will consent to the outpatient tests - it would be a herculean effort on her part to get dressed, get there and go through the tests.
So, we are where we are.
No communication at all from siblings so I assume they are happy 🤷‍♀️

Yes, the spending money. Is it usual that they don't itemise how it is spent? If DM was in her right mind she would not be happy about that - she kept receipts for EVERYTHING and ticked them off against her bank account - she and DF had to be very frugal during the early years of her marriage and it stuck. My instinct is to ask for details of what it has been spent on, but I don't want to be 'that' relative...

So mil has had a cognitive assesment by a nurse visiting at home ( it was very low ) and then a Dr in surgery ( still low ) and has been referred to the memory clinic for formal testing but if course it will take months for an appointment .
In the meantime she is lying about her self care . It's obvious she is not keeping herself clean or at the very least maybe a wash but no bathing or showering , hair washing , nail cutting etc but will say she is doing all of those but she clearly is not .
House is still acceptable in cleanliness .
Until she gets her appointment at the hospital , do we just let her slide into lack of self care or is there anything more official that can be done .
She refuses any help and will lie about things as mentioned above .

@ElderlyDilemmas oh I hear ya.

A not completely dissimilar situation was why things weren't so harmonious on the last visit.

I tend to go down fortnightly (I know, I have it easy) and go through paperwork then. Paper is good because I can write the outcome on the paper in big clear writing and file it out of the way.
Emails you can't do that quite.

Leg leaking again tho :( :(

I know this is minor compared to what a lot of you are dealing with, but dealing with my mum's finances when she can't fully do it herself but won't stop trying is Doing My Head In. She agreed for me to take over with LPA (I had to anyway for Dad as he was going into the carehome) but every time I do anything to try and save her money or make life easier (which she says she wants, she is worried about how much Dad's CH is costing) I am quizzed endlessly by text, then a letter will come to her house and she will read it out to me and I deal with it but she puts it back in the pile and then finds it two weeks later, forgets it has been dealt with and the panicky texts start up again. Literally all I have done is make Dad a separate current account (they only had joint before) to protect her money from his care fees, all savings are separate, and switch her gas and electric (they had never switched and this should save her a substantial amount) but the grief I am getting for weeks now. She has a good pension herself and even with Dad's going on his fees she has more than enough for her own needs and I get that it's worrying but aaargh.

Back from regular visit to MIL (800 mile round trip, made gentler by direct flights). District Nurse came while I was there and definitely delivered some tough love. MiL seemed to take it on board, not changing anything mind, but did say she was right! Also told DN 'Scrab takes good care of me'. Didn't look at me at all, but said it in my presence, which was affirming as she can be quite negative.
Have moved no further in increasing carer time, getting rails or a fall alarm just think positive, Scrab, I won't fall) or having fire safety check, but...take the small
wins!

Do you mean her spending money which they use for podiatry, hairdressing, any toiletries they source etc? I never see how that is spent but they don’t ask for £100 too frequently so I just pay it.

or do you mean a third party top up to the CHC funds the care home is now getting for your mum?

@Choux similar here, DF scored highest on mobility (he is hoist transferred, cannot bear weight on his legs at all), some score on skin (he has very fragile skin / eczema and needs active management to prevent ulceration), food allergies but controlled by diet, but he is compos mentis, compliant, healthy weight, can just about feed himself and is medically stable (takes oral meds for BP etc like many his age) he doesn't score much in most of the categories. If he deteriorates I would request another assessment.

For me, DM was discharged to the care home from hospital, and in the following days, the CH manager said to me 'you know your mum's got CHC funding, don't you?' I didn't even know what it was! She is a self funder, but i can well see that the council may find ways to prioritise council funded people.

Separately the CH are now asking me to top up mum's cash funds, without any more information about what for. Is that normal?

@Chouxthis is similar to my experience of applying for CHC for my mum (refused). I did agree with the assessment in the end but interesting your points about council wishing to save money, I hadn't thought of that. I remember the assessment highlighting that my mums needs could be fulfilled by a carer or skilled family member, and medical care was generally not needed, which is true. (A GP comes in when needed, and there are nurses on the staff who I think supervise medication).

My mum had a CHC assessment last week. This was an automatic consequence of her having her needs reassessed by social services because her previous residential care home said her needs had increased and she needed to move to a nursing home. She moved to the nursing home about six weeks ago.

We - myself, a nurse from her new nursing home, her social worker and the CHC lady who met mum before the meeting - used the decision support tool and everyone provided feedback. Mum was graded as needing the highest level of support there is for Cognition and Communication and the second highest level there is for mobility. But as she has no primary illnesses, no challenging behaviours and can still feed herself she doesn’t rate highly enough to get CHC funding.

I agree she has no primary illnesses so wasn’t surprised by the outcome but the cynic in me does not think self funders get a fair crack at the whip when social services aka council employed staff are part of the decision making process. I think where there are two elderly people with very similar needs one of whom is self funding and one of whom has no savings and is currently being paid for by the council, the person with no funds of their own is likely to be prioritised for NHS funded CHC as it saves the council from having to fund that person’s care. We know that councils are seeing their social care bills grow and I think social services will do whatever they can to try to keep their costs within the budget given by the council. One obvious way of doing this is for council staff to grade self funders slightly lower on their needs and council funded people slightly higher to give the people the council are funding a disproportionate share of the CHC funding. It’s similar to how the council only pays £800 a week for the care home places they use for people without savings but as a self funder you have to pay £1,500 plus. Self funders subsidise the council funded places.

It already feels unfair that dementia itself is not a primary illness. Add to that the way the council as a bulk buyer of care home places negotiates / demands a lower price than self funders pay and the niggling feeling that the council prioritises the elderly people it pays for to receive CHC funding and I feel like the system is a bit rigged against self funding families. I have only been on this dementia care home journey with one relative but social services are experts in how to make the care industry work best for their employer.

Thanks all for the information on CHC. I went through the check list and about the only thing DM is able to do for herself is breath.

This all started because the nurse at the CH said that DB needed to sort pads for DM as she had been using ones from the 'common stock' and it was now her turn to provide some. Sounded like BS to me.

But then again I have noticed that carers take a communal approach to things like body wash. DM gets through it like she's drinking it. Apparently carers will 'borrow' from another resident if one doesnt have toiletries.