Jeremy Hunt, what an arsehole

[camilamoran]

Apparently, the reason we have so many lonely old people is because, unlike the East where they respect their elders, people here stick their grannies in residential care 'as a first resort'.

What is his evidence that this is true or the main cause of loneliness in the old? I'm at the age now where I know a lot of people coping with their aging parents. I also know some people who work with carers. I don't know anyone who stuck their parents in a nursing home as a first resort because they are getting a bit old and annoying. I know people putting a lot of time, money and thought into keeping their parents at home for as long as possible. I know people who have found nursing homes for parents, after a lot of heart searching, because of the amount of care their parents need.

I think right now many families are absolutely stretched to the limit, there is not much give left unfortunately.

I am somewhat in the middle of this right now with both my family and my OHs.

My OHs father has rapidly progressing Parkinsons, he is being cared for at home by my OHs mother, who is in poor health herself. They receive help in the form of disability aids and council tax reduction but not help in terms of caring. Every time we go down my FIL has lost more weight and my MIL says she is not really coping, but when we talk about trying to find help, be it carers inside the home, respite, nursing home, she will not hear of any of it. It is a 'personal thing'.

My parents are also in the midst of it. I have my mother in fantastic health being totally broken by trying to care for my father in terrible health. He is currently in hospital having had a pretty large procedure, is now doubly incontinent, can't walk or do anything for himself, yet is demanding to come home. My mother is trying to install a stairlift and other disability aids quickly to enable this but doesn't know how she will cope with the level of caring he will now require. They get no help from the council, have to find the money to fund this themselves and any sort of home is totally out of the question as my dad is a very strong willed man and they'd have to commit him to get him in a home!!

I have offered my living room as a halfway house as they were trying to put a hospital bed in my parents tiny 2 bed new build, there is no room whatsoever for it! Right now that has been refused but in the future it may be the only option.

plus you cant really just have a spare room now can you to facilitate moving granny in :/

Maybe if the government provided better care for the elderly and support for their carers people wouldn't feel pushed to move their parents/grandparents into care homes? Maybe if carers allowance wasn't such an utterly pitiful amount that might help? But people have to provide for their families and go to work. Giving that up to be paid to provide 24 hour care for an elderly relative when you get about £80 (not sure but it was about that when I got it) a week is just not viable.

Of course it's much easier in China, you can just get your child to work nightshifts in the iphone factiory while you care for your elderly relatives.

What Lunatic said.

And come on, we all know he means women. The majority of people don't expect men to do personal care for their parents, children, or even spouses.

But our political classes wanted a world where people don't have any worth unless they do paid work outside the home, and that is the world they built. So here we are.

It reminds me of the Thatcher era when she close the psychiatric hospitals and told us that we should be more receptive to care in the community. What she actually meant was we want to save money by closing down old, crumbling hospitals and selling off the expensive land underneath and the patients within would just have to infiltrate back into society and it was our responsibility to facilitate that. Cracking success all round Maggie!!

Now the government is trying to cut another wedge off the welfare budget by trying to guilt families back into pre 1930s living arrangements where whole extended families lived together and ate produce from the garden and kept their front steps polished. This is slowly happening anyway because young people cannot afford to move out and middled aged people are moving back in with their parents due to divorce, debt, unemployment.

I think the thing that gets most peoples backs up is the public school boy Tory mentality in that most of them are absolutely clueless. They were born with a silver spoon up their arse, have a trust fund and the ability to pay for an army of carers if their equally wealthy parents became infirm. They genuinely have no idea how hard the average man is working right now and just keeping it together as another swathe of price increases start to hit.

I thought most people in nursing homes were dementia sufferers.

There's a good reason that newsreader made that famous Freudian slip when Jeremy Hunt was Culture secretary.

my mil cares for 3 older people in their homes unpaid! she is a paid carer for her own mother but cooks nightly for 3 others and does all tye washing etc
its a joke.
she made Sunday dinner for 16 people last week. she delivers hot meals and makes sure medication is taken, rings drs

Yep, notyomamma, and your MIL is counted as "not economically active" while doing all that.

Eldritch has it spot on. Women are to do this. And their labour doesn't count.

This has utterly infuriated me. When my mum had a stroke and heart attack and became very confused the family tried very hard to look after her. She lived with my sister and my other sister and I spent our weekends and leave travelling (in my case three hours each way) to give her a break. We weren't able to keep mum safe though, as we all WORK (hello, Jeremy) she was left alone all day and wasn't safe. She has moved into a lovely and incredibly expensive care home and is well cared for.

Yes it is more common for elderly parents to live at home in eastern cultures. This is because women are expected to stay at home and take on this role, often with little choice about it. One of the things my mum used to say before she was ill was that she didn't want any of us to give up work to look after her - she said she didn't put all that effort into our education and see us go to university to give all that up. Jeremy Hunt however would happily oppress women to support the elderly.

On a side note though, I have been wondering for a while whether I could volunteer to support an older person locally who is a bit isolated or needs some help with things like shopping. Does anyone know of any charities who work with people who need this sort of support?

China are building the largest elderly residential home in the world due to lack of families caring for those elderly relatives, nice respect that..

Its a myth

I'd like to know exactly how I could look after my parents in my home when they become incapable of lookin after themselves in their own home. It currently takes both me and my husband working full time to pay for our modest 2 bedroom/1 box room house, for us and our 2 children. There is simply nowhere for them to sleep, and if they couldn't live in their own home then they probably couldn't manage the stairs and so have no access to a toilet... There is no way we could afford a bigger house. Do they think these things through?!

My grandmother refused point blank to be looked after by either of her children. She didn't want to impose that on them. many parents feel the same.

And if China wants at home care by the family womenfolk to continue they had better do something about their female infanticide rates. Patriarchal practices forcing women to do things to save family capital does not amount to occupying the moral high ground.

I seem to be doing Zim stories this morning.

Zimbabwe also has the lovely tradition of elders being cared for within the family.

Hence a successful young man of my acquaintance, who'd done well in the big city, saying that his mother was getting elderly - so he thought he should get married so he could send his wife to live in the rural area to care for his mother.

Well that seems like a good deal compared to an honest, paid, contractual relationship as a professional carer... Right.

When I worked in a care home I was always struck by the families when we had a new admission. They were, without exception, always distraught at having to take the step of putting their parent in a home. I would always wonder how they had managed as long as they had as most of them were at the point where they were a danger to themselves and others.

I challenge Mr Hunt to live full time with someone who is incontinent, only recognises you occasionally and periodically thinks you are a burglar who has stolen their pension book/shoes/hairbrush and will vocally register their distress at full pitch for hours on end.

I agree with the OP. Can't see Hunt cleaning up shit for his doubly incontinent and aggressive/confused aunt somehow, as my mum did while working, and eventually put my great aunt into a home. I was really worried about my mum having another heart attack, more than anything else.

There are shed loads of people caring for other family members - including a lot of children caring for adults - with very little support from the state -up and down the UK. How about some fucking praise and help for them?

Also people live alone for all sorts of reasons.

What is even more bizarre now that I reread his speech is that he makes a valid point about lonely and neglected old people in our society. He makes a valid point that this is shameful and a breakdown of the social contract. But its not a breakdown of the social contract within the family. I suppose it's a kneejerk Tory reaction to locate everything within the family but this is to do with our responsibilities outside our family, in the community. I don't really see why he then goes off on this irrelevant and offensive rant about too many people being put in nursing homes. Doesn't he see that this will enrage exactly those strivers that the Conservatives are trying to appeal to.

Yes, the Tories are going great guns this week. It's almost like they are deliberately trying to get rid of (who they need to be) their core voters.

Firstly, Osborne cracking on about closer relationships with China and making Chinese immigration/holidays easier. That's going to go down well with the person teetering between them and UKIP. Also it won't sit well with my parents' generation (not that I necessarily agree) where the words "Made in China" do not exactly conjure up something positive.

And now this. Brilliant.

What is it with men called Jeremy anyway? Are there any that don't make you suspect that David Icke is right about the reptilian aliens amongst us?

He has married a Chinese woman which apparently where some of his ideas may have come from.

well apparently the situation in China is changing among the better off. I saw a documentary some time ago reporting on the new trend among Chinese middle-classes to place their parents in care homes, interviewing both those who had chosen to do this and the elderly residents themselves. It was quite interesting. You could see that it was still an uncomfortable decision for both sides to some degree but this situation does exist in China too -although I doubt it is widespread since it is only an option for those able to pay for it.