...to ask how we fix the care system?

[TheABC]

The furore over the NI tax rise has obscured the fact that little will change on the ground for anyone giving or receiving care. AFAIK, there are no changes or help for the unpaid family carers and no extra cash, training, or appreciation available for the staff in care homes.

The number of over-80's is forecast to double in the next 10 years (ONS), so the demand for care is only going to rise. AIBU to say we need a National Care Framework, in the same spirit as Scotland's?

||www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/overviewoftheukpopulation/august2019||

[quote notanothertakeaway]Coincidentally, here's a thread giving reasons why people terminated a pregnancy. Some of the reasons do not meet the high tests in abortion legislation, which again illustrates my point that legal safeguards can be watered down over time

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4346471-to-think-no-woman-aborts-a-baby-lightly-is-untrue-and-unhelpful[/quote]
You're still conflating two different things.

This is the equivalent of some people saying there are only specified reasons why someone may consensually choose to end their life - of you imposing on others your value judgement on what constitutes poor quality of life rather than allowing individuals to determine what is an intolerable quality of life for themselves. It will after all be different for every person.

Women being granted abortions within the legal time limits is not an erosion of safeguards.

Your strawman argument is that people will be murdered. The thread you are linking still lends no credence to that notion.

There is no evidence from countries that have legalised chosen dying of it devolving into murder instead. You are scaremongering based on zero evidence.

@ChardonnaysPetDragon

Nothing to do with my own moral compass, more a sad truth that SOME people will be quicker to say their parent has poor quality of life if there's ££ at stake

So? Why are you making it about money when people's dignity is destroyed? Why should they be denied an exit on their own term just because there are some chancers out there?

Build in safeguards in the systems, and let people take their own decisions.

A chosen death - consensual euthanasia - does not take into account whether one's children claim your quality of life is poor or excellent, because it is not up to them to decide.

A chosen death - consensual euthanasia - does not take into account whether one's children claim your quality of life is poor or excellent, because it is not up to them to decide.

Of course.

I'm uncomfortable with the emphasis being placed on money instead of dignity.

There is a great difference between assisted dying, and abstaining from striving to keep alive. Especially IMO when dementia beyond the early stages is involved. Why would anyone strive to keep alive someone who is doubly incontinent, who no longer recognises any of their own family, and/or, like a poor lady of 80 odd in my DM’s care home, who was in an almost constant state of tearful distress, either because she had to get home for ‘the baby’, or, depending on which particular obsession was distressing her that day, her mother wouldn’t know where she was and would be so worried. And no amount of comfort or reassurance from the very kind staff could help her.

There surely comes a time when Nature should be allowed to take its course, and to strive to keep alive is verging on cruelty.

How old is your Mother, @Candleabra? I ask because once my mother was past 90, with pretty advanced dementia, we agreed with the care home that active life- prolonging treatment would not be in her best interests - palliative care only would be best.

We were at least partly influenced by the fact that she’d been an intensely private person who would have been horrified at what she’d become, and would certainly have said, ‘For God’s sake just let me go.’
In the event the question never arose - she went on to 97 and then went downhill very quickly.

TBH I’d have thought you were perfectly entitled to have a similar conversation with staff.

She's 70 @GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER

Diagnosed 6 years ago. So started off from a very high level of health and fitness.
She is terribly physically frail now now, especially now she can't walk, but it's all caused by the dementia, no other co existing health problems.