Just been to visit dh gran in a care home, so depressing

[Wolfscarf]

Really makes you think about life

one person was tryig to escape when we arrived
must have had dementia
sayign have you seen my wife have you touched my wife
and o want to go home

then when we left another lady was trying to escape

dh gran is stuck in her v small room alotnof the time as there’s no carers
to take her downstairs then bring her back as they are short staffed all the time

the staff seem lovely but I feel so so bad for them
I don’t know how they do it

I agree with you on this. No way I want to be suffering endlessly, I think its bloody awful we had this mantra of extend life as much as possible - no no no. A person should be able to make decisions when in sound mind of how long they want to live with no legal implications.

My late MIL's dementia care home was wonderful. Caring staff who welcomed us like friends whenever we visited, and who chatted to MIL as if she understood every word and bit of their own family news etc. They was always clean and sweet smelling and they always dressed her beautifully in items that went together and suited her. She was always in the lounge and not her bedroom. They didn't take any short cuts that we could see and treated her kindly and gently.

I think it's worth saying at this point, that her home was a rare council-run place. No private commercial owner, no shareholders, no profit making, and staff who'd worked there for many years. We saw no staff turnover at all in all the time she was there.

My mum's BUPA care home was grim. Dingy, boring, and with staff who didn't even acknowledge. I never saw anyone chat to my mum (who didn't have dementia, but was hemiplegic after a stroke). Often when we visited her she'd have dried breakfast cereal on her face (we'd visit late morning) and no-one ever bothered with the kind of cosmetic stuff like shaving her chin hairs. My mum had always been proud of her appearance and would be mortified to receive visitors in that state

Back in the day, people seemed to want to avoid council care homes, but now they're the ones I'd go for.

Aaargh. SHE was always clean and sweet smelling

You know we’re in 2022 and there probably only 20% of care homes that run correctly
There mainly understaffed, no money for upkeep
and just look awful

my fil had Dementia, at first he was at home with wife looking after him until it got too much for her.
He went in a few nhs homes.
I used to hate visiting them homes, as soon as you walk in there’s a smell of wee.
when fil first went in the last nhs care home he had a little mobility and knew and understood you. Within a couple months he didn’t know you(vacant face) not speaking and couldn’t feed himself.
I remember going one time and he had bandage on his foot, I asked why the bandage
he had pressure sore.
Those homes have put me off for life, I will never go in one and have told partner. I really hope I don’t get dementia 🤦‍♀️ so I can speak up for myself regarding my care.

fil was admitted to hospital with pressure sores, when I spoke to the sister of the ward
she told me “ she had never seen sores so bad, they were off the markers”
I was disgusted with that home, but unfortunately dp wasn’t on good relationship with step mum so didn’t want to cause big argument
wouldn't of bothered me, but wasn’t my family so I had to keep out of it.
From there he went into private nursing home
He was just a vegetable in bed all the time with his eyes closed. It got to the point of not eating food much, his sores were eating his flesh away to the bones.
This stuck with me for months, how someone can be left to get that bad is beyond negligence

I work for an agency and go into NHS hospital wards and care homes. The care in the hospital wards far exceeds any "care" given in the care homes I've worked at.

the women at my dad's home have their finger nails painted weekly if they wish

i think that's a nice touch and the foods good i know as frequently feed him choice of meals and a roast if they wish on a sunday and all puddings/cakes are home made im not sure if that is normal for others

This is probably because the NHS pays their staff better a wage than care homes pay their carers. The home I work in has lost loads of good staff to jobs in the hospital. Their reason for leaving is always the pay…

So much to agree with on this thread, one of the reasons I left care was because it was a case of giving everyone the bare essentials of care Vs giving some people good care and others none.
It's a horrible, horrible feeling when you genuinely care and want to make a difference to people, and then get hauled in the office and bollocked because Mr X didn't get a shave today (even though he asked you not to or fought with you and so you backed off and left him alone, or because you had to leave him to go and see to Mr Y who'd just stripped off and smeared everywhere because he doesn't understand his bodily functions any more, or because Mrs Z had fallen and you have to lie on the floor with her reassuring her for the 3 hours it takes for the ambulance to arrive) and you genuinely don't know what you could have done better without a miracle occuring or another five pair of hands. And the only reason it's been brought up is that his family have complained, so now Mr X gets a shave everyday whether he wants one or not and someone else gets a little more rushed and a little less care.

The expectation is that of 1:1 or 2:1 care for everyone but the resources fund 5 or sometimes 6/7/8:1 care. It's just not feasible. And it's soul destroying to be blamed when you can do nothing about it. I was good at the job, but I'm getting paid more now in hospitality, a fair whack more and there's none of that going on (though it does have it's challenges!)
A place where I worked was 5:1 care during the day (and one of those was doing meds rounds of up to 2 hours at a time, so not available for hands on care tasks) and around half of the residents needed 2 carers for safe mobilisation. It was 10:1 during the night. It was a carer led unit with code locked doors for people with dementia (all had DOLs) - and we were often a staff member short on days - how on earth can you provide actual care under those circumstances, and as another poster points out, the carers on duty for those shifts don't get extra and the residents don't get a refund for the reduced care on offer - that goes in the providers pocket.
I think that if a rule were introduced where the residents get a refund of £X amount for each short staffed shift, you'd suddenly see an improvement in staffing, but the providers are laughing here, and as they are the ones who decide what the ratio should be to start with, and the CQC seem to very rarely take action against providers for not having adequate staffing (and usually only do when something major happens and they have failed to pin it on the carers) they have very little incentive to cover these 'short' shifts, that even at their own self initiated 'fully staffed' is usually already inadequate to provide decent care.

Ultimately I don't think the people cared for are valued at all, and therefore nor are the people doing it.

When we used visit DH's gran in a home there was one lady in the communal room that always used to shout out "help me please, please kill me, please, I'm begging you"

It really was awful. I only hope that she wasn't aware of what she was saying.

Yes it's very depressing. It's the price we pay for modern medicine and the fact we're all living longer. My grandad dropped dead in his sixties with a heart attack. This was decades ago. Current elderly relatives are all on an absolute cocktail of pills controlling blood pressure, cholesterol and countless other ailments. They will all love longer than he did but will wither away I imagine with dementia. Honestly don't know what's preferable.

@Tiny2018 I take my hat off to you. What a tough job you do and for not enough money

Should the Queen not have received care and died much younger?

I did a placement in a care home when I was in college. It was one of the worst experiences of my life, just so sad. The staff tried their best but they were so underfunded there were 2 hoists for 3 floors, which meant a lot of residents were not able to make it to a toilet on time which was so degrading for them. I had some lovely chats with the residents, but it made it an even more upsetting experience, knowing about their lives and being so sad to see how their last years/months were spent.

There was a woman like this at the care home where I worked. It was so upsetting. She was a wonderful woman and she couldn’t stand living where she did but there was no family to help her. I still think of her to this day. It’s just awful.

But the Queen was of sound mind - or certainly appeared that way - until she passed away.

There's a huge difference between an elderly person who may be frail, but still enjoying life, and someone with dementia. It doesn't appear to me to be a kindness to anyone to unnecessary prolong the life of a person once their mind has gone.

She needed care.
Or are you saying it is only people with dementia who should be killed?

Antelope you never cease to amaze me with your dramatic extrapolation and wilful misinterpretation of what other posters say 🙄

Legal assisted dying will surely become law in the medium term. However persons with dementia do not have the cognitive ability or capacity to qualify for this. Allowing relatives to make this choice for them would potentially lead to wrongful deaths. Its complicated. It is a good idea to note your wishes in writing ( advance directive) regarding the level of medical intervention you would want if incapacitated in the future. Understand tho that these wishes are not legally enforceable but do guide medics and families if the situation arises. For sure there is a lot of medically futile treatments endured by the elderly. As for care homes there are no easy ways to make them more livable but paying low wages and not having enough staff doesn't attract or motivate anyone. Small homes definitely are kinder places than large ones

And if yes, what stage of dementia should they be killed at?
When they forget some words? Or when they forget who politicians are? Or when they forget who their family is?

I will never agree that the state can decide when I should be killed. I do not trust the inevitable decision-making process one bit.

I think this is a very insightful post.

One place I worked at was so short staffed the carers used to give some of the residents other peoples' nutritional supplement drinks or even just a milkshake because they were too rushed to be able to sit and feed them their food.

Also qualified staff who would only administer pain relief if they could be bothered or believed the person was in pain. One withheld painkillers because she didn't believe he was in pain. The resident was continously distressed and crying because they had peripheral shutdown in their lower limbs - a notoriously painful condition - I went bananas about it when I was next on duty. I ended up quitting because I couldn't stand it any longer. Stupid, incompetent, lazy and thick nurses are quite common in these places. Many are too old to be doing the job and can't be bothered because they're at the end of their career and are burned out.

It is not. I know people in their fifties on those medications working full time and with children. Should they just be killed?

But equally why should you get to decide euthanasia shouldn’t be an option for other people?

My friend is is a nursing home. He's c completely antisocial anyway. But is Even more reluctant to come out if his room, because literally everyone else has severe dementia. So even if he did, he'd have no one to talk too. His care has been excellent, despite the home being rated inadequate by the CQC. But I do t know how the staff do it every day.