to ask the church to help?

[OlympicGoldPennies]

Not so much an AIBU but an AIM realistic.

My mum is a very regular church goer. She goes to the very poorly attended old fashioned service along with about 6 others. They are all of a certain age (well into retirement).

This week my mum has been unwell and we are at a turning point in terms of her ability to live independently and safely.

AIBU / realistic to speak to the vicar to see if he or one of the lay ministers can pop in to see her once or twice a week just to see how she is / have a cup of tea? This is in addition to some more structured and official help but I think my mum would appreciate a familiar face just checking on her.

YANBU but you do need to be realistic, for example the vicar probably has more than one church and whilst the 'active' congregation may be small there may well be quite a lot of people who expect a visit from them. I would hope that the church would arrange for someone (not necessarily the vicar) to visit regularly but I do think YABU to expect that it will definitely be once a week.

Yes ask. That is what the Church is all about. Our Vicar would regularly give home communion to my Great Aunt when she lived at home. She would also get regular visits from lay people in the Church.

Looking after elderly relatives can be such a worry, I hope you get the support you need.

My mum, who has mobility difficulties, has the Parish priest pop up regularly for Communion, or if he can't, there is a sister at the Convent who will pop around. Usually they are pretty good about that.

Our parish priest used to say that if you were sick enough to call a doctor you were sick enough to call a priest.
He also asked parishoners to let him know if they knew of any other parishoner who was ill, housebound or in hospital to make sure they were visited.
Such a lovely man who spent his final days ministering to those in the hospital beds beside his and making the nurses laugh.

Absolutely YANBU. My MIL was in hospital a couple of weeks ago and her parish priest was enquiring about her and organising a rota of people to drop in / cook meals for her before she even got out of hospital! If the vicar's any good at all he'll be glad to be told that she's ill and will have ideas about how to support her.

Yes do ask. They should have pastoral care.

Hopefully the vicar will find people from nearby parishes who will be very pleased to help out with collecting prescriptions, providing food, popping in or phoning to check on your mother.

YANBU.

However, when my mum went into residential care I emailed the vicar to ask for a visit or even for someone to take her to church coffee morning now and again. She'd spent years working for the church: pastoral visiting, front of house duty, etc. I never even got a reply.

Ilovesooty That's very sad. Any chance your email went to the wrong address? Seems odd they didn't even reply

OP Yes think you should ask if someone could visit. Even someone else in the village. If the congregation of your Mum's church is so small, I think the vicar will be associated with several other local churches

Doubt it, redwineformethanks I used the contact form on the church web site. I was disgusted.

Ilovesooty - The website could be out of date. Possibly set up by someone a member of the church a while ago who moved on and no one took over. I think this happens sometimes in schools. I've seen a few school websites with out of date info about Heads of Department etc. I only mention this in case it's not too late to lift the phone and make another request.