To worry about where the money for dementia care will come from

[Potatoduster]

If the NHS is already stretched how on earth will it cope with a huge surge of the baby boomers needing dementia care and wanting the NHS to fully fund it?

it's actually quite a good job she didn't, it could have been considered deliberate deprivation of assets and those grandkids could have been footing her bill.

Not if you do it soon enough.

I think if I had a 90 year old grandmother paying £1.400 a week to a care home I’d have her living with me. Probably not practical but at least not being ripped off.

I always thought dementia care WAS covered by the NHS. I've learned something today.

@BeanBag7

@SnuggyBuggy
"Surely they have to give patients with dementia all lifesaving treatment, unless they have already signed consent not to?

You can't say "this person has cancer but we wont try to treat them because they have dementia" unless you have consent from them"
SnuggyBuggy isn't advocating others being refused treatment if they have dementia. She refers to thinking of having something in place for herself saying she would only want palliative care and not life-saving treatment if she has dementia. She isn't talking about stopping treatment for others.

Yes it is usually funded by savings and property sales. My grandparents both had excellent dementia care at the end of their lives but my gosh it cost a serious amount of money, far more than mortgage and childcare. I wonder what the profit margins are on those places, and how much liquidation of assets is going into private enterprise's pockets because they sure as shit aren't paying the care nurses decent wages. I also hope that medication will seriously improve or assisted suicide is introduced because the generation now scraping together deposits who won't be benefitting from a nice sweet property boom are in real trouble.

I mean, I knew assets were sold to help pay for the care, but I still thought it was all under the NHS umbrella

cool that £1400 a week is likely funding 24 hour all round care. Residence and all associated costs, washing, cleaning, meals not to mention personal care too. I doubt it’s due to ripping people off. Yes the home owners will make a certain amount of profit but don’t kid yourself that care could be provided by others cheaply.

And how would you work, pay bills etc if you’re providing care day and night? Many people with dementia will wander and have sleepless nights so you’d be responsible for that too.

"I never understand why people object to paying for their own care. All our lives we pay for ourselves"

What I object to is the lottery element to this. Health is to some extent a matter of luck - if you drop dead suddenly from a heart attack you face no bills at all, but if you have a horrible, lingering disease like dementia you lose all of your assets. There's something essentially unfair about that to me, that goes against the principles the NHS was built on.

Of course we all need to pay for care - but I think an equitable way of doing this via the tax system could be found, e.g. higher rates of inheritance tax for all. I also think it would be good to nationalise all care so that it's not a source of profit for private companies.

And yes, we would all have to be paying a hell of a lot more tax if we wanted the NHS to cover it.

coolandcalm my grandparents needed 24hr specialised care at the end, I wouldn't be able to provide it in my own home.

I think if I had a 90 year old grandmother paying £1.400 a week to a care home I’d have her living with me. Probably not practical but at least not being ripped off.

I really doubt you would when you realised what the care involved. MIL has always asked to live with us but there's no way it could happen (even if we had the room which we don't) due to her needing 24 hour care.

The flip side of consent with some treatments is that they can do as much hard as good and have no guaranteed outcome.

We had an awful case at work with a cancer patient, he didn't understand what was being done to him and was very frightened of the procedure. Asking him about his symptoms after treatment was a joke because he couldn't even remember the events of the last evening and the home couldn't monitor him 1 to 1. It just didn't feel right and its not what I'd want for myself or my parents in their last year of life.

as mentioned by pp - the issue is that saving of one spouse is used for their care leaving the other is desperate circumstances - dementia is an illness & usually the health/physical/mental impact is more a medical condition than a social & as such more people should be given some financial support for the medical conditions. Not only have people affected paid national insurance over the years they have paid tax both directly through work but also through everything they use or purchase throughout their lives as well as them supporting the community as a member of it (ie working or caring). People have worked hard to live in comfort & security stripping the assets so rich people & companies don't have to pay their tax - does that seem fair?

No you wouldn't @PinkSparklyPussyCat - not if you had a baby and an autistic pre schooler to care for and you grandmother didn't particularly care for you much, even before dementia

I briefly worked as a nursing auxiliary with dementia patients in an NHS hospital. There is is a day-shift and a night-shift. Dementia patients often don't sleep at night. They can be highly agitated, violent, wanting to leave the hospital thinking they are somewhere else and getting enraged with you for stopping them wandering into the road. They need to be washed and most of them did not want to wash, etc. Really hard work and quite heart-breaking really, but that's the reality of dementia.

Trying to do this alone at home without adequate support must be a nightmare. Statistics show that 70% of caregivers over the age of 70 die before the patient.

You've got it @DuckWillow - constant high level supervision

The dementia patients I helped to care for had also had breaks - hip, thigh, arm etc. So a hoist was needed to get some of them in and out of baths. We worked in pairs. Again, almost impossible to safely recreate this in the average home.

Yup, @augustagain - my grandmother is at A&E more often than some of the paramedics

The smallest little old ladies could be surprisingly strong! They punched, kicked and bit the staff who were being very kind and gentle. One lady (who I rather liked for her feisty nature - we got on well) wanted to leave the bathroom IMMEDIATELY after using the toilet and didn't want to wait for me to clean her up and pull up her knickers. Obviously, I wanted to protect her dignity and did not want her tripping up. I had to pull the cord to get another member of staff to come in and help me. The old lady thought she was in a park with her sister and she had fallen out with her sister and wanted to leave. She was very angry and very strong.

You need to be strong to restrain someone from hurting themselves or doing something dangerous. You need to be able to help support their body weight. It's hard, hard work.

Dementia is a horrible, horrible disease. It's so depressing and heartbreaking to witness. Years later, I still think about the people I met in that job.

The majority of people don't choose nursing homes for their loved ones on a whim. It's usually after months, sometimes years of caring for them at home. Care home admissions are often due to carer breakdown (it becoming too much for loved ones), very high risks or following a hospital admission where the need for 24 hour care becomes evident.

@jamoncrumpet

Sorry to hear you are going through this.

NHS won't fund it. My grandad has dementia and Alzheimer's, diabetes, kidney failure. He is in a home he has to pay for. He cannot move, feed him self or anything. He's at the end of life stage and still they say he does not qualify for Chc. Bloody ridiculous.

There is neither the money or the will and it’s going to get a lot worse.

What happens to people who don’t own their own home? Or have a private pension?

Trust me the NHS doesn’t cover it. My DF has 2 years in a care home before he died. My DM funded it all.

It is wrong on so many levels as it is a disease that is totally unpreventable but it isn’t supported by the NHS except with memory clinics and a small number of drugs that don’t have a huge impact at end stage. Can you imagine any other life limiting conditions that were abandoned like that? Conditions that become impossible to care for in the end stage, at home.

My grandmothers house was sold to pay for her dementia care. If you have no assets it’s free care.