To not want my mum called a doubler?

[DollyPartonsBeard]

Popped into care home this morning on my way to work to drop off a new sunhat for my mum. She's 89 and has been in residential care for nearly two years as she has dementia. She's also had several strokes and her mobility and balance are impaired and she needs two people to help her use the loo and bath and get dressed etc.

Usually visit later in the day but went in early as I noticed last night her straw hat is falling apart so took one of mine in so she can sit out for a bit today.

Arrived about 8.30 and mum was up and in front of breakfast tv. She's never been an early riser and has her radio alarm to come on to R4 in the morning and then a gentle start to the day or so I thought. We discussed these things when she moved in (the dementia has deteriorated since then but she can still express her needs) and I like the fact this home seemed to tailor care to individual's existing routines and likes.

Told a staff member I was surprised to see mum up so early and they said it was new rules and the manager said all the doublers had to be up before the night staff went off duty. When I asked what a doubler was she said it's people who need two staff to assist them. I reminded her that my mum is Mrs Ginger/ 'Mary' not a doubler.

AIBU to hope my poor old mum doesn't deserve to be described by a term which refers to her limitations, rather than by her name??

YANBU

Words matter. It takes nothing to say ‘residents who need two staff to support them’ instead of a dehumanising label.

Reminds me of the times I go on training courses and hear staff (usually carers) say stuff like ‘I had to wash one of the nonverbals’ makes me cringe. YANBU at all. If they’re using language like that in front of relatives I’d be wondering how they refer to patients out of earshot.

I’d never, ever say ‘she’s one of my OCDs’, always ‘she’s a patient I’m treating for OCD’ for example (not what I do but an example).

Words do matter and nursing homes are institutions that are at risk of propagating institutional abuse or neglect.

PP seem to be getting mixed up here.

Yes, we can agree that if the staffing levels mean patients who require two staff to get up have to be up by a certain time and all other alternatives have been explored then that’s sadly what has to happen.

The point is that in a caring role with the authority and power that comes with, you just do not refer to human beings in your care like that. It’s not that ‘Mary’ requires two staff members to get up, the issue is that she is being referred to as a ‘doubler’ rather than Mary or a resident who needs two support workers to help her up in the morning.

At my mother's CH (dementia only) where she lived for nearly 8 years, they took the view that it was the person's home, and therefore they should be able to get up and go to bed when they felt like it. My mother would frequently be wandering around half the night - this was accepted as entirely 'normal' in a dementia care home.

Of course some of them would need encouragement to get up at all, but that is a slightly different issue.

It was insensitive of the care worker to refer to your mum like that, but I don't think it was meant to be insulting. S/he should have expanded the shorthand into plain words.

It doesn't matter how good the care home is, or how well their practices work. Even if they are gold star standard no-one should be referring to patients/residents as doublers or any other such work slang.

Yes that’s a low bar but it’s realistic. If we want excellent social care it’s gonna cost millions more In tax.

Why should the bar be so low though? I worked in a care home for 6 years one of our managers introduced Flexible meal times and later breakfasts to enable the service users the choice the same for going to bed. They aren’t children and they should be respected to have a choice when they wish to get out of bed and when they wish to get out of bed especially when some service users are paying 500-600 a week for their care! The term doubler was massively inappropriate term and should never have been used. It’s totally unacceptable and you are right to question it.

Seasawride

Don’t kid yourself care homes are private sector and make a considerable amount of profit!

When people use certain terms and words, what their saying isn’t magically separate from what their believe and their perception of the world.

Someone who is able to say ‘she’s a doubler’ isn’t likely to be privately seeing residents as individuals. If you saw the people you were caring for as individuals I doubt you’d be able to bring yourself to use such a dehumanising label.

PP saying ‘it’s just a word’ are missing the bigger picture. If that’s a widespread terminology in the care home it says a lot about the ethos and organisation wide beliefs of the place. They’re either using it because their management do too, or management have no problem with residents being referred to in that way. The place could be rotten to the core with all kinds of other dehumanising attitudes and practices.

My father is only in his late sixties and fit and healthy, I am trying to imagine this healthy active man who works full time and has lots of friends and a great marriage and hobbies in twenty years time being referred to by a care worker as ‘a doubler’, it both breaks my heart and enrages me.

Elderly people are people like we are, individuals just like us, and we will be old one day if we’re lucky to live that long. Think for a second about the attitude a carer must have to be able to say something like that. And to justify it as ‘it’s quicker to say’.

I must say I’m reassured by the number of PPs who get it and think OP is not being unreasonable.

Snapped

Your care home sounds brilliant and of course the bar should t be low but I worked in the community for many years as s district nurse and the differences between care homes was purely down to expensive private, beautiful and council home, atrocious.

It really is down to money like everything in life. You get what you pay for.

especially when some service users are paying 500-600 a week for their care!

MIL pays £1200 per week.

lyndsey

You are lucky you havnt had to deal with altzimers day in and day out.

It dehumanises everyone. My poor mum not a clue what’s going on, my poor dad struggling to cope with her rages and her demands and her poor daughter, me, reduced to wiping her bum and feeding her as my sibling not interested.

Trust me day in and day out of that can change you.

And I also agree with every word of your post and would have written it myself 8 years ago.

Getting old is shite.

I think many of the expensive ones are chains like many nursery providers. It’s a business. We need far more proper funded authority homes I think. Attatched first hospitals to keep up best practise. But home from homes.

Cost too much though. It’s still raising taxes and Boone wants to pay

I have every sympathy for care home staff and much anger at how care funding is under attack. But if the low pay was the real issue here, then surely ALL carers would be downtrodden and dehumanising? In fact the majority we've interacted with have been very good, and keen to tell us about things they are trying out to improve quality of life. But there are a few, like the one this morning, whose attitude always seems a bit judgey as if we've just dumped mum there when in fact it was a difficult decision that was made with mum included, precisely because we do love her and feared for her safety when she was alone in her home, petrified that burglars had entered while she slept and stolen her purse (which inevitably had been misplaced)

YANBU about the change to your mothers routine, that should be respected. The phrase you object to was just that, a phrase. If the staff are kind and do their job well then just be glad of it.

MIL was in a horrible place which still cost very£1500 a week. A new manager came in and banned beakers because ‘beakers are for babies.’ No additional staff were provided to ensure the residents didntbscald themselves so I guess they drank a lot of cold tea.

Doubler may just be 'a word' to some people but it seems a shameful word to reduce a human being to.

£500/ £600/£1,000 a week does sound a lot, until you work out what it's supposed to cover. Starting with purpose built accomodation (lots of the old, large converted house type care homes shut years ago when the requirements were upgraded). The heating (lots), lighting, washing, laundry, food, equipment. And then the staff costs - cost of multiple carers 24/7, specialist carers, medical support managers (yes you need them to oversee things, be responsible for how things are run, keep up with ever increasing regulation), cleaners, administrators. Then the company that owns the chain will need business staff to keep things solvent. And that's all before profit.

Lots of companies have gone into the care sector thinking they'll make a quick buck. Either they've gone bust or they asset strip, sell on and piss off. Of the ones that remain, very many are close to the edge.

I would check what time the shift change is. When I worked in a godawful hole of a so called care home the dementia patients were got up from 5am so the night staff could do them all before the day shift arrived. They were also put to bed from 6 pm.

Dolly.

Honestly I dont think anyone has said this word was appropriate to use to you, or in your mums hearing, but it may just have been a thoughtless aberration although very regrettable and upsetting.

You shouldn’t feel guilty about your mum you know. You did the right thing for her and you. I know if dad goes before mum then I would have to put mum in a home or my life would be effectively over. She can’t be left alone. I have dh, kids abd grandkids and responsibilities and I just couldn’t allocate mum the time she needs

The residents in the home I worked at were got up at 05:00 and the staff started putting them into bed mid afternoon. They had to have their tea in bed. There just wasn’t enough staff. It was awful.

You are lucky you havnt had to deal with altzimers day in and day out.

Sea, it’s strange that you’re making assumptions about what I have and haven’t dealt with.

Not everyone ends up dehumanising the people they care for when they’ve been in the job a long time

I would hate to hear my mum described in this way too. It really wasn’t the best way for the care worker to express herself. However I would probably raise the issue of a forced change to routine with those higher up than because the decision has come from them.
The lack of funding and resources in care homes is crap.

Lyndsey

I assumed you hadn’t as your dad sounds so young and fit. I do apologise again on this thread I didn’t mean to upset you.

I too was a nurse for years and I think I i was bloody good but no training has prepared me for the daily helping to look after someone you love with altzimers. That is dehumanising.

In no way was I saying the care worker was right to use those terms and I hope my last post was supporting to the op.

For context, Im almost 43. Ive had double handed care for 4.5 years, at home and overall ive had 5 stays in nursing homes, 3 in a crap one and 2 in a good one.

Ive had home carers for a number of years this current agency apart from 2 small blips in the overall landscape has been with me for 2.5 years. Excellent.

The 2 before that who i had for 11 months and 8 months respectively, the 11 months agency couldnt cope with my changing needs, the 8 month one was major factor in pushing me into a breakdown and suicide attempt,

i went into respite in a nursing home for 16 weeks and was treated well as a respite/ rehab case i had been there before between the 11 onth agency and 8 month one starting. They missed out tea for me one evening as my room door was shut and i was in a big sleep and didnt wake till meds time and nurse came round and realised i hadnt got food at almost 10pm, i was handed the take away menus for 3 places to order whatever i wanted they would be paying for it and it would be coming in a taxi from nearest town 3 miles away. I was gorging in less than half an hour,

In the time i had the 11 month agency, i had 3 short respite stays in a different nusring home and the difference between the 2 was chalk and cheese, i was patronised and called dear all the time by 2 nurses,

i was told that the nurse was dealing with a question about my medication and why was i speaking to the chemist, answer was because he rang my mobile,

when i needed help in the middle of the night and couldnt get out of the bed, i rang the buzzer it was still going an hour later so i rang the outside line and asked someone to come round,

i sat on a low windowsill for a rest on a corridor as was trying to walk again with zimmer a carer told me off for making place look untidy, (maybe i should have just went to the ground as that was the other option and the windowsill was preferable) i should go to tv lounge and sit there didnt get it that i had gone as far as i could and needed a rest before anything else happened,

my bag was unpacked for me and my clothes started to be marked even tho i had said i was sending them home for washing so didnt need it done and

the 2 worst things of all in my opinion was after being hoisted out of bed onto the commode and i was saturated with urine as per normal, instead of letting me wash in a basin and put on clean clothes, i was wrapped in 2 sheets and wheeled uncermoniously down the hallway while i protested that i didnt want a shower and i could make my mind up, it was monday and everyone has a shower so i had a shower cos i wasnt able to do anything about it, dried off roughly in wet room and sheets around me again and back to bedroom.

The other thing was food, it was short supply, you ticked the menu but i found it didnt necessarily mean you got it, i was shown the 2 dining rooms sadly i wasnt allowed to use them as i wasnt a full time resident so i had to eat in my room. They also forgot about me several times and there wasnt a cook in the kitchen, each morning the manager picked one of the carers to work in the kitchen doing that days meals and if i was buzzing as they tended not to answer buzzers anyhow to say i needed food as the room door was shut, i ended up having to ring outside line for that too. I ended up one evening with a meal which was made when they realised i didnt get tea and it was 3 hours late i couldnt reach my phone or i would have rang, so one of the day carers who did a fair bit of cooking made me her speciality and i dont mean to knock it, i threw up over i after 1 bite (scrambled egg sandwiches / not toasted)

A friend rang who was planning to come visit the next evening to see did i want him to bring anything over when he said what time he was planning, i asked for a chippy tea as it was tea time there. I took the tea when it was served up and saw the horror on his face whe he said do you want me to go get a burger for you as well. I had 2 fish fingers and 4 chips, finito.

I have heard some dodgy language over time and where possible if i suspect it may be used in relation to myself i will challenge it and go thru the appropriate systems. With the 2nd agency it was emotionally abusive and soul destroying, it is only now 2.5 years on that i am getting comfortable with some parts of care and being open able it and not being told many times a day - its you, you;re mental.

The good news is after the constant reporting of how it really was from someone who was able to say patients who were funded in the 1st nursing home were moved and they dont get the business now not from that team and i came under the highest bracket of funding so was attractive to them. The 2nd agency has also lost the contract as well, I wasnt the only one but I couldnt be silenced and kept notes and in the end recordings, it helped others apparently speak to the comissioning team and find out what was going on.

It is ok to refer to someone as needing two helpers. It is not ok to decide what time she gets up on this basis. Her care plane should be based on her needs, not those of the satff