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.

No one learnt from the abandoned care homes in Canada and Spain, it won't be long before staff walk away.

And just who are the press and society going to hammer I wonder if that happens? Will it be the systems in place, or the care home owners, or those making policies? Nope. It won't, it'll be the care workers that again, get the blame and carry the can.

@Iamthewombat

There should be no more correlation between selling the family home to pay for care as some grows old and having to sell the family home to pay for your child's leukemia treatment.

Good quality end of life care should be available to all and if that means taxes go up or we don't get a pointless high speed railway (in a small country) so be it.

the figures from ONS are reported on a fortnightly basis.
they are now going to be added to the daily figures,

think of the poor admin people trying to do these figures.

how about this question, they have deaths in hospital, deaths in care homes, deaths at home, and deaths other? eek, in the car/in an ambulance?
frightening.
terrible times.

Xenia isn't wrong. Also lots of older people do not want to go in a care home, they will choose to remain in their own home or with family, knowing that they are unable to care fully for themselves. It's an active choice not to prolongue life in a poor state. All 3 of my grand parents made it.

Older people are also often not quite for aggressive respiratory support or resuscitation as they are too frail to tolerate it.

Just this.Cannot believe how care home residents and staff have been thrown to the wolves.

I don't know why people are blaming the government for this. It is us who put our elderly residents in care homes, instead of caring for them at home ourselves. This is what many other cultures do.

We would all like our elderly frail parents to be treated as if they are national treasures, of course we are unable to provide this care ourselves because we need to live our own lives, neither can they afford to pay for it themselves.
Neither can the government, but we still want it

this is what many other cultures do
SIGH🙄
In traditional/less developed cultures where there are fewer numbers of frail elderly and far higher numbers of oppressed women who can be made to Sacrifice their own ambitions in order to care for others
This is just not feasible in a modern culture

I don't know why people are blaming the government for this.

Because of this guidance:

www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-hospital-discharge-service-requirements

And this guidance:

www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-admission-and-care-of-people-in-care-homes

It's really not complicated.

Jaxhog unless you have genuinely provided long term care for a loved one who needs 24 hour a day care and supervision, and I mean 24 hours - forget going to the loo or taking a phone call- then I suggest you give it a break. Or even consider apologising to those of us who have had no choice. None.

As I posted above, my father died with the virus a few days ago. Your comments really, really don’t help.

Bey is bringing her to stay with you an option?

Having worked in Dementia Care @Jaxhog it ,s extremely hard and often soul destroying ,imagine caring for an aggressive doubly incontinent parent at home that doesn't recognise you?I'm not sure I could do it and I was a Nurse who worked in Dementia Care!There are many reasons why families have to make the decision to place their relatives in a home and I can't i imagine it's a decion taken lightly

Sadly im not shocked sadly the elderly are never really prioritises and care workers are treat terribly by society. it is a disgrace

When people are slating care and nursing homes with these sweeping statements, could they perhaps give a though for a) the members of MN who work in them and b) those of us with relatives in these homes 🙄

We would all like our elderly frail parents to be treated as if they are national treasures, of course we are unable to provide this care ourselves because we need to live our own lives, neither can they afford to pay for it themselves
Neither can the government, but we still want it

Preventing a deadly and highly contagious disease into care homes is not rocket science & hardly treating our elderly as "national treasures"

People cannot look after parents with complex health needs 24/7, that requires a team of trained staff and a home suitable modified.

Aside, i really don't get the cost argument, HS2 alone would pay for many years of care for the elderly, as would reversing corporation tax cuts, an on going 5 billion per year loss to the treasury - we already have one of the worlds lowest rates.
Plenty of money available but there isn't the political will to do it.

@Jaxhog, have you ever tried caring for someone with middle or late stage dementia, at home, on your own, with little or no help? I doubt it, because anyone who has would rarely come out with this pious pontificating about what ‘other cultures’ do.

In any case, it’s just not true. We have Indian friends (in India) whose elderly parent with dementia was cared for by two live in carers, in her own home, 100 miles away from our friends. When I remarked how often it’s said in the U.K. that ‘other cultures’ always look after their own, she said that anyone she knew, who could afford it, would do exactly the same - and pointed out that such arrangements are comparatively far cheaper and easier to organise in India, than they would be in the U.K.

Of course many people all over the world have no alternative but to care for relatives at home. In a poor rural village in Cambodia where a dd was working, she saw an elderly woman with dementia whose care consisted of being tied to a chair outside all day, a) to stop her wandering off and getting lost, and b) to prevent her incontinence messing up the house.
Such were the only practical options for her family.,
Once a day the results of her incontinence were hosed off her, outside.

@MatildaTheCat

@Jaxhog I would have loved, absolutely loved, to take care of my mother at home until she dies. I cared for her for 6 years. I didn't 'put' her in a home, she was sectioned under the mental health act and I was told we had no choice but to find her a nursing home. It is utterly soul destroying to read what people like you have to say; until you have cared for a anxious, agitated, aggressive, depressed dementia patient 24/7, just be quiet.
@Lemonblast- i wish i could. there's loads of factors which mean I just can't, one of which is that I am now very very pregnant. It hasn't been possible and wasn't fair on her at the beginning, nor would it be now.

The problem with the tests (as I understand it), is that it only tests positive while you have the symptoms, and will not test positive if you are 'incubating' the virus. That is, you have become infected, but the symptoms have yet to appear.
More is understood about the virus all the time, but I do not think you can blame the Gov, when a clinical decision has been made to discharge a patient, who may have been in hospital for something unrelated.

Aside, i really don't get the cost argument

No, people very seldom do. It’s always somebody else’s job to pay more tax to make things happen, isn’t it?

HS2 alone would pay for many years of care for the elderly

Would it? HS2 is expected to cost around £100 Bn. There are half a million people in care homes in the UK right now. Even if those numbers stayed steady, which is unlikely with increased lifespans, that’s £200k per resident. I presume that you want care workers’ salaries to increase, since you don’t really get the cost argument.

Let’s say that all in, including employment costs, each care worker costs £40k per year on a new, higher salary. Then care homes have to be heated, lit, cleaned and maintained. Residents have to be fed. Care homes have to be run and administered by non-frontline staff. That £200k per resident isn’t stretching very far now, is it?

as would reversing corporation tax cuts, an on going 5 billion per year loss to the treasury - we already have one of the worlds lowest rates.
Plenty of money available but there isn't the political will to do it.

Can you understand that lower corporation tax rates increase the overall corporation tax revenue flowing into the Treasury because more businesses want to site themselves in low tax environments? You may not like it, but that’s how it is. The UK CT rate has indeed reduced over the years. It was over 30% when I started my accountancy training. It’s now 19%. The CT take, inflation adjusted, has gone up.

Bey it’s an awful situation for you to be in. If you can, I’d ask the staff again to at least send you a picture or two? Just to give you some reassurance that she’s ok.

The government could have enacted a policy that divided care homes into ‘hot’ homes with the virus, to which patients with it could have been discharged from hospital, and ‘cold’ homes without it. It wouldn’t have been foolproof, but would have massively reduced the spread in care homes.

They chose not to.

my guess is that they chose not to because that would draw too much attention to what was going on in care homes, they chose the 'expedient' option of sweeping it under the carpet

I'm not saying that all elderly should, or could, be cared for at home. But for far too many people, care homes have become a first rather than last choice.

That's a rather sweeping statement @Jaxhog you have no Idea why relatives choose to place relatives into care homes

I think care/residential homes have had trouble getting PPE but actually from what I have heard the people in the care homes are trying very hard with some carers camping in the fgounds and living on site to reduce transfer of infection. They are always under funded/ understaffed/ under paid. under appreciated. And from what we seen else where that's not just here.