Shocked about death in care homes **MNHQ content warning**

[happyandsingle]

Just this.Cannot believe how care home residents and staff have been thrown to the wolves.
Everything focused on the NHS it's like the elderly didnt matter.
Feel ashamed how we treat our elderly and even if the government act now in my opinion it's to late as to many lives have been lost.
To think the goverment need to be held accountable for this.

Oh just noticed the change to the title, Why?

Probably because OP couldn’t be arsed to delete ageist posts on the thread - ageism being the last bastion of acceptable ‘ism’s’ on Mumsnet.

Probably because MNHQ (not OP)!!

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER

And I'll repeat there is no 'one size fits all' when it comes to dementia. I agree with a huge amount of what you say but please will people stop assuming that nobody with dementia has a life worth living

The whole bloody point of lockdown is to shield the old and the vulnerable. So this is just not true either. The whole point of lockdown is to shield the NHS so it is available, including for the young.

(and to save lives)

CQC...not fit for purpose...they tell hospitals, care homes etc when they are coming. Worked at a private hospital that kept staff to a bare minimum, but when an inspection was happening staffing level increased and certain staff picked out for the 'interviews'..always the staff who could 'talk the talk'...the place had 'housekeepers' (to posh to be called cleaners) falling over themselves when some days you didn't even have someone to empty a bin...qualified nurses were suddenly in demand when usually one trained to ward and 1 or 2 HCAs were 'adequate'...made me sick to my stomach that people were paying big money for the care they should have been expecting to receive...much like the elderly in private care homes. I wouldn't pay to spend time in either to be honest!

The home my nana is in called today to say two of their carers has tested positive for covid just wondering what my nanas chances are of catching it she is 91 and severely bedridden it's just a waiting game now
The home closed to visitors well before the lockdown so we can't even go see her it's awful
And the poor staff too everything is so uncertain

@berryhead2013

shinynewapple in the way I mentioned in my post - govt/councils to negotiate with card home owners to take over/buy space.

Exactly how they have done with the private hospitals.

The very fact they have done it with the hospitals means it CAN be done. For a price.

And it’s obvious they won’t pay that price. And it’s obvious why.

It could be done if the money were spent.

Let’s face it, it’s in the interests of the care home owners for their residents to survive, so why wouldn’t they participate in such a scheme, as long as their costs were covered?

Un-fucking-believable

I sound awful

I agree with this bit.

I think there's a difference between care homes and nursing homes. If you are in a nursing home you don't have long left. My father was in one for about 6 months before he died.

Care homes are a step below nursing homes. Some obviously deal with quite seriously ill patients, but many have elderly people living in them who are still relatively fit and healthy but can't look after themselves anymore. Some might not be in a care home if we had more of a halfway house between sheltered flats and care homes they might be in those instead (I know they exist in some locations).

So someone in a nursing home almost certainly would have died this year anyway.

The situation for care home residents is a lot less clear cut.

@shinynewapple2020, I never said that nobody with dementia has a life worth living. You have misinterpreted my post.
The sad fact is, after having lived with dementia 24/7, and having made hundreds of visits to relatives in dementia care homes, I have seen too many people for whom it would surely be kinder to let them go, than to strive to keep alive.

My own mother’s former self would have been utterly appalled to know how she’d ended up, every shred of dignity stripped away - no matter how kind and sensitive the care. And I’m sure many other people would say the same of their own loved ones.

@puffinandkoala that's just not true, nursing homes are for people with nursing needs- like my mum, who's been there 2 years and is still physically healthy. So no, she wouldn't almost certainly did this year anyway

No, it wouldn’t. Look at the maths again. Who calculated this £6 Bn shortfall, and on what basis? What is the shortfall covering?

Ask the Dept of health, they came up with the figure, but if you know better, do offer your services.

Of course corp tax receipts are rising because the economy grows!

That’s what ‘inflation adjusted’ meant

Nonsense thats not what inflation is.

There is an optimum level for CT that brings in maximum revenue. Higher is not always better. If it were, every country would be charging 50% CT

If that were the case, every country would have the same CT rate, they don't because other factors come into play.

As for the self funding element, its actually quite small because i believe the avg length of stay in a care home before death is rather short.

What you haven't answered is why should someone have to sell their home to fund care but do not in order to fund cancer care?

I asked you to explain what the shortfall represents and what assumptions underpin it. I didn’t challenge the accuracy of the calculation; that’s not possible without understanding the inputs and assumptions.

Do you know the answer, or do you regularly quote statistics without understanding them? I suspect the latter.

You clearly find it difficult to cope with questions about numbers that you blithely quote without understanding how they were calculated, and retaliate with unseemly, spiteful, tit for tat digs. There’s an easy solution to that: only quote facts that you can substantiate. Then you won’t make a fool of yourself. You’re welcome.

Earlier you, or somebody else, claimed that cancelling HS2 would pay for ‘many years of care for the elderly’. I demonstrated that it would not using...wait for it...evidence. I see that you have now changed your story, probably without realising since numbers are not your strong suit, and have decided that the cost of HS2 will cover not the full cost of care for ‘many years’ but the ‘shortfall’ you can’t explain or support. Naming the body who calculated a number is not the same as being able to explain it.

I know what inflation is, thank you. It is a reasonable proxy for GDP growth, which is one of the drivers of corporation tax receipts. That, and your other arguments in favour of increasing the rate of corporation tax so that somebody (not you, naturally) pays more tax despite evidence that in the UK higher CT rates decrease overall CT revenue, are too silly to even engage with.

As for the self funding element, its actually quite small because i believe the avg length of stay in a care home before death is rather short.

In that case, you will have no objection to assets being used to fund care, will you? Do you have an evidence base to support this belief of yours?

What you haven't answered is why should someone have to sell their home to fund care but do not in order to fund cancer care?

Because, as other posters have eloquently pointed out, the NHS is not designed to provide end of life care. A tax to fund care was proposed; the idea was met with horror by supporters of all three main parties. You are dead against people’s own houses and savings funding their care: is that because you are worried about your own inheritance? Where do you think the money to provide a gold standard of care for every old person should come from? Your ‘increase the rate of CT’ idea is dead in the water.

The easiest way would be to increase the rate of income tax to Scandinavian levels. I don’t suppose you’d like that either; nor would most people who are not net contributors. You’d have less money available to buy a house, and clothes, and go on holiday. Would you be prepared to put up with having a much smaller house, or no house at all, and less disposable income in order to lavishly fund care for the elderly? Or is that somebody else’s problem? How about funding a fully-staffed critical care ward in every care home? If your stated aim is to keep elderly people alive at all costs with unlimited funds, would you pay 55% income tax and have less yourself? I think I can guess the answer.

Nobody is complaining that elderly frail people who get the virus are not being taken into hospital and ventilated.

Nobody on this thread thinks that heroic medical efforts should be made to prolong the lives of very old people with limited quality of life and limited time left.

That's what makes the current guidance so disgusting.

Unleashing covid in a care home presents a fair chance of a death sentence for anyone living there because the majority of residents will have a high risk of severe illness and will be too frail to benefit from intensive care. And contrary to popular opinion lots of residents will not feel the time is right for them to lie down and die. And contrary to popular opinion people still have the right to be treated with dignity and people's human rights have not been cancelled no matter when they were born or how long they have survived.

It's very, very basic epidemiological knowledge that if an infection gets into a community residential setting it will spread like wildfire.

It's very, very basic competence to do whatever you can to prevent infections taking hold in community residential settings.

Our government has actively facilitated the spread of this virus within care homes.

Aren’t most cars homes privately owned?
How is the government responsible for them?
But where does this stop?
Are all privately owned companies expected to receive help with acquisition of PPE? It doesn’t really work like that in afraid

Ah yes the daily mail view of socialism. Absolutely necessary when you need a handout, reprehensible when someone else does.

So all those private companies the government has bailed out with the furlough scheme should have been left to sink or swim eh? I'm sure you will also agree all those self made company directors moaning they havnt had any support are also being unreasonable of course?

And we have become stuck on ventilators as if the choice for very unwell patients is either lying prone in an ICU bed with a tube down their throat or facing inevitable death at home, or in a care home, with not much medical care at all. There are lots of things we could be doing more of, inbetween these two extremes, that would allow some people to die in less distress and with more dignity and would allow others to survive, despite their age and underlying conditions.

Don't let's forget all those pandemic stockpiles of PPE we used to have (which could have been distributed to NHS and private facilities) which were massively reduced as part of the Tory austerity programme.