How to find a nursing home - not self funded / no hospice available

So sorry for your loss and so very relieved to hear that you all found some peace at the end.

I’m so sorry for the loss of your DMIL but it does sound as though she had a peaceful death and that can be a great comfort for those left

Sorry to hear that your MIL passed away, I’m glad it was peaceful and at home.

Sorry for your loss, best wishes to your family

The key here is that it is for end of life care. Once someone is confirmed as 'fast track end of life 'funded it should always be NHS who fund this. It is not always clear when people reach this point though. However there is also NHS funded short term packages of care out of hospital which were set up to try and end delays to discharge whilst people argued as to who would pay. Unfortunately it has not achieved this and often people who are self funding normally will sit for weeks in hospital awaiting their free care , and then have to pay a few weeks later when means tested.

My dear dad got CHC, fast tracked and sorted by the nurse in 24 hours. Fully funded space in an end of life facility attached to a care home. He had amazing care. Yes we pushed for it, as did the hospital staff, but it is possible to access.

@hatgirl Unfortunately you aren’t in the world most of us inhabit. I’m honest in what I’ve said and setting up high expectations for the op is simply unfair. Many posters have said they cannot access NHS services. Anyway I wish the op well but services are severely rationed.

This is complete nonsense.

I don't intend to engage further with you on this thread as it seems you are just derailing the OPs request for support with your own vendetta whereas I and other posters have been trying to ensure the OP has the correct information about how to access support for their specific situation which hopefully they have now been able to do

Enjoy the rest of your day.

@hatgirl The bar for a care package is incredibly high! People simply don’t get them. Yes, you are in an enchanted world. Many many elderly folk get nothing. SS are responsible and everyone knows lack of care means old folk yoyo in and out of hospital. You aren’t on the receiving end of a very restricted nhs and if you saw the horrors of hospital for the elderly you really would understand the mess relatives have to deal with. The bottom line is: it’s down to relatives. Care is severely limited and you have no idea about the issues caused.

This is 100% correct. People please stop posting that Social Services should. It isn’t and shouldn’t be.

An enchanted world?

No - just 20 years experience of working in hospital discharge, sitting in CHC funding meetings and working with the local ICB to identify when its become their responsibility to commission care packages.

It's really not that uncommon. There's probably at least 30 people a week discharged just from my local hospital alone with an NHS funded package of care either through D2A or FTCHC. I know this because I sit in the meetings every day where it's planned!

I'm sorry if you had a bad experience but that's absolutely not typical of how things are supposed to work - even self funders are entitled to D2A or a Care Act Assessment.

@countrygirl99 My DM was discharged 4 times with no nhs involvement or assessment. Nothing. No idea how people get so lucky. SS didn’t assess either. They didn’t visit once. DM was 93, 95, 98 and 99. Absolutely zilch despite discharge papers saying there was a role for GP. I know others have had exactly the same dire service. We had to find care (26 attempts) and DM paid for it. Total nightmare.

Dad had NHS funded discharge to assess care that did exactly this

@hatgirlThe nhs support health care. That’s not the only care the elderly need! It’s very limited and doesn’t get meals, get people out of bed, wash them etc. You must live in an enchanted world if you think it does. I know of no one who has had personal care funded by the nhs. Many elderly have ailments that prevent safe living at home but the NHS is absent unless there’s obvious illnesses and many old people just never see anyone from the NHS.

Absolutely 100% this. We have a number of relatives who have care needs which require NHS support and they are fully funded as their conditions are so awful. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, by the time someone reached the levels to secure NHS funding quality of life is almost non existent. But in this case, end of life support should be being given.

@tigerbear I hope you managed to get through the weekend ok. Please keep us posted, thinking of you.

You are completly incorrect unfortunately.
The NHS fund and commission home carers all the time for many different reasons including:

Fast Track Continuing Healthcare

Fully Funded Continuing Healthcare

Discharge to Assess (D2A) home pathways

Care where the only needs identified are health needs such as meds or compression stockings.

S.117 funded care packages where the needs are all health related

Those are the most common ones but there's those and many other circumstances where the NHS commission and pay for care.

@hatgirl SS are supposed to assess home care needs. The NHS don’t provide carers.

If you can’t manage her safely at home she really needs to be in hospital and then the hospital will kick social services into action to sort out a nursing home placement. Nothing happens quickly. What shocked us was the time it can take to get a funded home sorted. Basically adult social services send the details of patients over to their panel of homes and home can choose to bid or not. Quite a few came to visit my mum in hospital and then rejected her after assessment as they deemed her needs to be too great. This process took quite a long time. I didn’t realise how choosy some of the homes could be so that was a bit of a shock that she was effectively rejected from a few.

The difficulty you have is that adult social services can move at a glacial pace. If her end is imminent then she might have a better time at home but you need good support as a family to manage that and it doesn’t sound like you’re really there. You’d need to be assured that pain relief etc was in place for
her to stay comfortably at home. Only other alternative really is to go into hospital which probably will be worse in the short term especially if she’s stuck on a corridor but probably would get things moving with social services.

She doesn't need to speak to adult social care at all as they have no authority to do anything in the situation described in the OPs posts.

The care is currently NHS funded. Which means the NHS should be arranging it (and from OPs updates if you have read them it appears the District Nurses have arranged a care increase already).

The confusion appears to have arisen because a GP has (correctly) suggested the family consider 24 nursing care rather than a hospital admission if the care needs can no longer be met at home but has then completely failed to give the family the information about how this will actually happen and has left them floundering over a bank holiday weekend.

@tigerbearYoy need to liaise with SS. Did hospice know you aren’t self funding? Maybe not. SS probably will resist paying and GPs wash their hands of this. If SS agree to pay, there might be a choice but possibly not if everywhere is full. You need to contact SS urgently. Maximum is 4 visits a day.

As someone who has been a social worker for nearly 20 years, manages a frontline social work team including D2A hospital discharge and regularly has to clean up the mess and incorrect advice given by EDT Social Workers after a bank holiday weekend I can assure you that you are not correct.

OP I'm sorry to say the hospice lady is incorrect as well. If anyone else tries to get you to ring adult social care again push back at them and say that she is CHC fast track eligible and that the NHS need to be sorting this out (and it sounds like the DNs are in fairness!). It doesn't sound like there is any dispute about the funding stream to me, just a group of professionals who are covering a bank holiday weekend and don't have access to their usual systems and senior staff to give the correct advice.

I hope you all have a better day today.

If she recives this cant she stay with her for the time being? I would be suprised if she lasts 3/4 weeks, by the time you’ve sorted a nursing home it might beto late.