To think that my dad shouldn't be treated like this..?

[Scarletohello]

So my dad who is 81 and has dementia and is now registered blind went into a care home 5 weeks ago after I couldn't cope with looking him any more ( had moved back home the last year to be his carer)

I had thought it was all going well but I turned up at the home tonight to find him not in his room but in the bedroom of another resident, swatting in the corner, with his trousers and pants round his ankles and his underpants full of shit, having defacated in them. It was horrifying! I called for help but the staff were all too busy to come help him. With the help of my friend, we got his trousers and underpants off him, cleaned him up and led him back to his own room where we put pyjama bottoms on him, put his soiled clothes in a laundry bag and sat him in a chair.

Eventually a staff member turned up, took away his clothes and very blithely said, oh yes , last week he smeared excrement all over his bedroom wall, to the extent that the wall is going to need to be repainted.

WTF ? We are paying a lot of money for this home and we just want him to be safe and looked after but this seems unacceptable. I really don't know what to do. He has a toilet in his room but he can neither see it or remember its there. It was horrible to see him like that, I don't know how long he'd been like that or what would have happened if we hadn't turned up when we did. I know the staff are busy but surely this shouldn't be happening...?

I was about to give you the whole speech about understaffed/overworked/burnt out/ blah, blah until I got to the bit where none of the staff or the management seemed to think there was anything wrong.
Your father found himself in a very undignified position due to his illness. Loss of dignity should not be inevitable. I think everyone appreciates that lack of staffing is real problem in elderly care but even if you don't have the resources to meet everyone of your patients' needs bang on the minute you shouldn't feel that its okay for grown adults to be treated like toddlers, no matter what their mental state.
At the very least the management should have been down on their knees apologising for this. The fact that they didn't is pretty worrying and might be a cause for a governing body to have a look at them.

Sorry, not read he whole thread so do not know if this has been mentioned before.

This is not good enough, but an unfortunate reality of care of people with dementia.

The staff would have been busy elsewhere and often go without breaks in oder to get everything done.

Please contact the staff or a social worker to see if he is eligable for CHC, continuing health care funding. There would then be a review meeting held, which you could attend, which would make a decision about how great his needs are. This may then provide funding for one to one care on top of the care he already gets.

Good luck.

Unfortunately when you have a system where someone is set to make a profit from providing care to vulnerable people the standard of care is never going to take priority over cutting costs and maximising profit. Care homes should be taken out of the hands of private individuals and companies and be publically run imo.

So sorry you are having to deal with this worry, it is not right but it happens too often

notunder

Hear, hear

we just want him to be safe

He is safe, he is just covering himself and the home in poo. It must be absolutely awful for the staff. With so much to do, it must be the last thing they want. I cannot imagine how you stop an adult male from going to the toilet where he wants to. And I doubt the CQC does either.

Notunder, I do believe you are right there.

It is a real worry, especially the older we and our elderly relatives get, and the more their needs increase.

Under staffing may very often be down to cost cutting and the maximising of profit margins too. The welfare of the actual resident/patient can come too far down the list, sadly.

I know that isn't the case in all care homes, but it is something you hear all to frequently, and a debate that never goes away.

This makes me want to cry :( your poor Dad.

I haven't got any real advice I'm afraid, but I just wanted to say I hope you manage to get this sorted so your Dad is happy. Have you spoken to the manager?

He is safe, he is just covering himself and the home in poo.

No. That isn't being safe. Safeguarding is about much more than whether someone can burn themselves or fall down stairs.

OP you need to start looking round other care homes and find one where this would not be considered run of the mill.

If this had been a result of several urgent situations occurring at once the staff would have been very apologetic.

I cannot imagine how you stop an adult male from going to the toilet where he wants to. And I doubt the CQC does either.

Taking them to the toilet frequently helps a lot as does just keeping a weather eye on your floor so you know who is where and what they're doing to give you a chance to steer them into the loo if they need to go.
In ten years of nursing and care work I've only ever had one patient fight me off when I've tried to take them to the toilet and he'd been poisoned by a neurotoxin.

LaGuardia

What a horrible thing to say. You can have sympathy for the staff and still show some empathy to the OP and her father.

Continence issues can lead to serious health problems including skin breakdown / infections so it most certainly can be a safeguarding issue.

Dementia leads to the lack of being able to sequence tasks so he may not be pulling his clothing down first etc etc so high levels of supervision are required to prompt and help people maintain independence and dignity.

Are you self funding this placement ?

Yes we are paying over £2k a month for this. I do have sympathy for the staff, he's only been there 4 weeks and they have all been very nice. We chose it because it is a relatively small home, 25 residents and much nicer than many others we looked at. The manager also had experience with visually impaired people which gave us confidence. This is the only thing im not happy with but ta a pretty big thing.

Can you just do something like move his bed next to the toilet. Or arrange his bed so his toilet is again in the path he used to take to get to it at home.

The staff seem a bit pathetic, surely for their own sakes they should be trying hard to find a solution, maybe a movement sensor so that they know when he has left his room??

He is safe, he is just covering himself and the home in poo. It must be absolutely awful for the staff. With so much to do, it must be the last thing they want. I cannot imagine how you stop an adult male from going to the toilet where he wants to. And I doubt the CQC does either

I really bloody hope you don't work in social care. The home should have a continence management plan in place to manage this. If they can't manage this there is something badly wrong with the home.

Op, call cqc, speak to the social worker, and run it past adult safeguarding as well for possible neglect issues. Personally, I would move your father if you are paying yourself as well.

Is it a residential home with a specific interest in dementia or just a nice residential home? Even if it is a 'dementia home' there can be huge differences and it would be worth your while asking other homes how they might deal with this.

For example I met a patient whose home had said he was 'unmanageable' for them due to his violence and aggression. He moved to another home who clicked that he was trying to leave every morning to go to work and getting violent when he was prevented from doing so. They let him go into the car park every morning with a carer where he stood for a bit looking confused, realised he wasn't in his garage and then cheerfully agreed to come back inside. Beautifully managed with no recourse to medication, it just needed a different way of thinking about the problem.

Could Citizen's Advice be able to help you? I'm sorry I've no experience of a situation like this. I hope you get a meeting with the care home manager at the very least.

Disgraceful. Understaffed is no excuse.

I know homes are expensive. Would it be cheaper to have him home but you use the money for help to come in?

Disgraceful, extremely sad and depressing but not at all uncommon. In a lot of places (doesn't sound like the case where your dad is thank god) residents are then punished for messing themselves up and creating more work by pooing on themselves. It's absolutely shocking how the elderly are treated in this country. Operators do absolutely everything they can to maximise profits and spend as little as they can get away with on actually caring for people.

Elder abuse is alive and well in the uk and those who perpetuate it count on the fact that vulnerable people can't stand up for themselves. The CQC does very little - a toothless regulator that's in bed with the industry. Government doesn't care either so long as they aren't paying for care, or paying he barest minimum they're happy.

Oh, I'm so sorry for you and your Dad. That's an incredibly distressing situation. I would call the CQC and log a complaint. Is his accommodation secure - i.e. he lives in a secure dementia wing?

You mentioned that you are paying over £2k per month. Has your Dad been assessed for Continuing Care? I would say (based on what you say) that he is eligible, and it's not means-tested. Some NHS trusts fund it quite well (e.g. Kent) and also allow you to top-up the fees, which would give you more options. It is different funding to local council funding which is means-tested and can give you very limited choice of home as few councils pay enough to homes for adequate care. If you do look into moving homes, the most critical thing is to meet the general manager and director of nursing - to large extent, they will set the "tone" for the home.

Not all homes are like your Dad's. There are truly some outstanding facilities, but it can be very difficult to attract good nursing staff into care homes as they don't/can't afford to pay an NHS defined benefit pension. Unfortunately providing good care is exceedingly, eye-wateringly expensive and frankly, few homes actually make much money. There is no way in the world I'd want the NHS running homes - not with the state of hospital care.

agree about the understaffing. At my grandmas home there was one carer to 50 patients. Management could afford to hire more. We go her out of there. People like your dad need to have one to one supervision at all times to have anything approaching safe and dignified care. But no one wants to pay for that kind of staffing. This is why elderly patients get into such appalling situations in hospitals. They need one to one care. And it doesn't exist.

I wasn't trying to imply understaffing is okay, just that getting angry at the staff is going to make that problem worse as it is not a very attractive job in terms of pay/conditions as it is. Is it possible to hire someone on a part-time basis to go and see if he's ok, take him to the loo etc? When we went to visit my grandmother a cou

Couple of weeks ago there was an elderly lady with dementia who tailgates us out the front door to the gate. As we cautiously tried to get out of it without her following she plaintively asked "Can I come with you?" exactly like a toddler would, pleading eyes and all. The next day she was at it again, trying to figure out the number code hidden on the visitors page (tiny numbers in the center of some flowers in the border). No one came after her to take her back inside so we popped back in to let them know that she was trying to get out. The staff looked like they were coming back from helping someone else and rolled their eyes as they clearly knew who we were talking about. I didn't think worse of them for it though- they've been lovely with my grandma since her hip fracture.

I worked in the care industry for a long time and currently have elderly grandparents in a care home, I could tell you some eye opening stories!

The best home I worked in had a manager in charge who was a registered nurse and nothing to do with the financial side of things. If we needed any new equipment or were concerned about anything we could speak to her and she would order whatever we needed. Then she was given the chance to invest and suddenly she started getting stingy, we had fewer staff on per shift and a lot of other money saving measures were brought in - all to the detriment of the residents. The cqc were aware but the care provided was still seen as good I dread getting old and being unable to look after myself!

Is this a specialist nursing home for EMI or is it a private run care home? Are they set up to look after elderly people with dementia?

Social Services found a specialist EMI home for my grandma as she has alzheimers. Have you thought about contacting them for advice/to pass on concerns?

Very sad for you and your dad.

I would complain to the care commission. Did you look at their previous reports? What were they like?

Sorry the under-staffing explanation doesn't sit with me. I would not accept it for my DD's nursery and would not accept it for my DF either.

Good luck OP sorry you and your Dad are going through this. It is very difficult.