To wonder who will look after us in old age?

[malificent7]

I am curently a care assitant temp until my permanent job in healthcare is sorted. It is very rewarding but hard, dirty work for little money.
They are understaffed and many are leaving due to bad pay. As we are an aging population aibu to think this is going to get worse? How can we get carers to stay,?

Disclaimer...there is no way i want dd to look after me...not fair on her...i'd rather go to a home.

@bestcattoyintheworld

The Daily Mail are totally hysterical about ageing and death related matters. They campaigned successfully to do away with The Liverpool Care Pathway, being totally unable to differentiate between its utilisation within care homes vs NHS hospitals - which is where the problems lay. I never saw it misused within care home settings and I was involved in countless pathway cases where people died peacefully and with no pain or distress.

Now, GPs are too unwilling to prescribe decent doses of morphine so palliative patients are dying in severe pain and distress. The Daily Mail have now got it in for midazolam (a sedative used in palliative care, which relaxes and relieves distress and agitation).

I would imagine their core readership is of an older demographic, so they should be careful what they wish for. Compulsory forced life for everyone, no matter how awful and degraded your existence is.

The Daily Mail is the Dunning Kruger phenomenon in the form of a rag newspaper. Fuck all of them.

Yes. And it's not just GPs that aren't willing to prescribe, nurses aren't willing to administer and nor are care assistants (where it's oral administration) because of the accusations of 'keeping people quiet rather than deal with challenging behaviour'. And that was an actual line from one of my medication training sessions.

As said, Midazolam is going to be next, a drug that helps people not be agitated as they approach death, as they are fighting to breathe and the fear that comes with not understanding what's happening. But we'd rather that than this almighty (and imo unfounded) fear that when they're sedated the worker gets an easy time of it?! We're leaving people in pain and distress at a time when they need it most because the alternative - a pain free and calm person is seen as making life easy for HCPs rather than benefitting the patient.

Were there issues with people being chemically koshed to keep them quiet? Yes, there were. But a sledgehammer approach to dealing with that has led to people being left in pain and distress at the end of their lives.

And I doubt any paper will pick this up, they're too busy reporting about people wanting to not pay for cups of tea at cafés to address something that's actually important and affects everyone on some level, that's being spoken about by 'unskilled' minimum wage workers that are unispired and too lazy to go and do better for themselves and therefore not worth listening to - just like it's always been.

I'd like to think I'll go out like my parents. Mid and late 60s, fit and healthy right until the cancer diagnosis and then dead literally a few months later. Very clean for them.

Devastating for those left behind but neither of them would have wanted their children to give up their lives to provide care or live to a grand old age burning though the cash in a home.

So hopefully genetics will play it's part and I'll be in the ground by my mid 70s. Much rather my children get my money than the shareholders of Care UK.

Care in old age is an absolute time bomb and only going to get worse.

I agree that a chemical kosh is sometimes absolutely necessary. It was with mil. She was horribly distressed.

However, it did mean that the chc (a whole other topic!) were able to argue that mil’s needs were easy to manage. Of course they were, she was zonked out 24-hours a day! But in order to prove that mil had severe needs she would have had to come off the medication which of course would have been cruel.

@Fernhilde

What happens to those of us with no savings and no children?

We'll get eaten by our pets

Joking aside, you rely on friends, neighbours and extended family if you have them. As and when you need help, you wait for social services to provide it. There is a minimum care requirement, but it's a bit of postcode lottery as to how good that care is. For example - a distant family member's MIL had to go into a council-funded home, and the standard of care and the facilities were pretty good. I have a friend who's Dad is in a council-funded home in a different county, and the care and facilities there are not very good - she's currently trying to work with his social worker to see if he can be moved.

@Blossomtoes even then there are no guarantees - you'd have to refuse treatment. A lady in my care support group looks after her Mum who has chronic COPD from years of smoking. Advances in respiratory treatment and oxygen therapy mean that she is well enough to still be here, but sufficiently ill that she requires 24/7/365 care - and has been like that for a number of years now.

If I was really cynic, i'd say that reducing the use of some medication (morphine etc...) in palliative care is paving the way to euthanasia as no one will be happy to die in horrible circumstances (and there will be no way to avoid it thanks to available medication)....

Dh garn had dementia at the end of her ife. Couldnt recognise anyone at all etc... and was in a care home.
She fell over (not noticed or treated until MIL visited and had a right go). DH gran had btoken her collar bone and was in pain.

Doctor on call was refusing morphine 'because it might reduce her life exptancy' Cue for MIl to explode asking him what sprt of life he thought he was giving her mum between the dementia and the pain.

Problem is, those patients cannot advocate for themselves and doctors/consultants often react as if they had well and fit patients in front of them. Quality oif life sems to come second after 'saving the person at all cost' :(:(

Very commendable for people to say they will look after an elderly parent .. not sure how that will work with someone who is doubly incontinent, doesnt know who they or anyone else is, with advanced dementia and violent outbursts. All in a 3 bed semi with an upstairs bathroom..
The above scenario is why we need proper social care.. RADICALLY different from the system that is on its knees right now.
All the love and goodwill in the world is no substitute for trained professionals doing a job they want to do in an appropriate safe environment.
Being a full time carer is soul destroying, grinding, unpaid slavery. There is little respite. And relationships in the extended family change forever.
Sorry to be so negative, but really and truly.. love does not conquer all.

@BarbieCampervan

I'd like to think I'll go out like my parents. Mid and late 60s, fit and healthy right until the cancer diagnosis and then dead literally a few months later. Very clean for them.

Devastating for those left behind but neither of them would have wanted their children to give up their lives to provide care or live to a grand old age burning though the cash in a home.

So hopefully genetics will play it's part and I'll be in the ground by my mid 70s. Much rather my children get my money than the shareholders of Care UK.

Care in old age is an absolute time bomb and only going to get worse.

And yes, this is a ticking time bomb. The funding the service gets now does not touch the sides and it gets worse every year as the population ages. So whilst I can say there is a minimum care requirement I genuinely don't know how much longer that can be sustained.

In 2016 those 65 and older made up 18% of the UK population. In 2041 that population share is projected to increase to 26%. Out of that demographic, those who are 85 or older will double; from 2% in 2016 to 4% in 2041. By contrast the increase in population for those between 16-64 is only due to rise by 2% in the same period - so you can see that we will not only have a greater number of older people (including those who are 'elderly') but we will have fewer people of working age. Longer lives mean more complex age-related medical issues - which require care. A baby girl born in the UK today has a 28% chance of living until she's 100. By 2066 this is forecast to be 50% of all UK-born girls.

This has huge implications not just for social care, but also for the economy. Mortality rates have fallen due to advances in medicine, but at the same time fertility rates have also fallen.

Doctor on call was refusing morphine 'because it might reduce her life exptancy'

Same with my mum, who was 97 and clearly dying. Apparently it would make her sleepy and constipated. He was all too willing to hand over the Oramorph and run away by the time I’d finished with him. So bloody cruel.

Longer lives mean more complex age-related medical issues - which require care. A baby girl born in the UK today has a 28% chance of living until she's 100. By 2066 this is forecast to be 50% of all UK-born girls.

You get some folks looking forward to reaching their 100th birthday. If you're like Captain Tom or the Duke of Edinburgh etc and in reasonable health (physically and mentally) then fine....but id have no desire to live to 100 if the last 10 years of it were in a care home and I didn't know what day of the week it was let alone how old I was. The number of people who lead active and healthy lives into their 90s and beyond must be pretty low, I almost think its quite a depressing statistic that so many are likely to live to 100!
My GPs died in their mid fifties, mid 70s, and 82. My own parents died in their early 60s (mum) and early 80s (dad) but none had dementia.

I don't even pretend to have an answer in our story, much less anyone else's story. I'd like to think that any medical practitioner called out to attend an extremely elderly patient with dementia would give a very substantial dose of whatever what was indicated required for the most pressing complaint (antibiotics, painkillers, whatever) and let nature decide, rather than trying for maximum life expectancy. Beyond a point of giving comfort and succour, there's an arrogance in extending life because we can. If life has few or no pleasures left to you, then why extend it just because?

I don't think it's about that. I have full time job, young children and live several hours drive from my mum. How on earth would it be feasible for me to become her carer?!

You've literally described my life. The fact you even question it is alien to me. You do what you need to do surely? You move to her or she moves to you. It's so weird to me that people don't see this as their problem. She literally gave life to you. You wouldn't exist without her. Unless she was horrible to you in childhood it's just not a question. You pull your finger out of your arse and you look after your mother FFS!

@Ledition do your DDs work? If so, how would that fit round your care? Do you have sons? Is it only the females who have to do the caring in your culture?

No, with your "lovely" undertones It's not only daughters who do this in my culture. I don't have sons I only have DDs and I would expect them to care for their mother like I care for them now. I appreciate it might be alien to you but it's what good families do IMO. My DDs are tiny. My mother is not yet retired but if necessary I will move heaven and earth to care for her and keep her dignity intact whatever the cost to me as I adore her and it's what she would want. If your mother is a horrible woman who was cruel to you then fine, walk away from her but my mother is amazing. I love her and will do all I can to make her final years bearable . Again because that's what loving families do. Christ on ya so weird that I have to explain it. Oooohhhh let's just send our loved ones to beautiful progressive Switzerland shall we? Fucking monsters.

Thank you GeorgiaGirl52 you've given me some faith!

We'll have to agree to disagree here. I'm not from the UK though, my culture is much more family orientated and I would without doubt want to do this for my mum. there's a difference between yo u wanting to and expecting someone else to though.

Should we oy have had one child so there was always a spare room for a parent to move in? Or no kids in case two needed help?

I have all boys, they / i might not feel comfortable with them providing intimate care. Is it OK for me to assume that they'll get a wife just in case I need it? That they'll limit their family size to accommodate me? That they should sacrifice their own careers or their children's childhoods because they should feel a sense of duty?

whatever the cost to me as I adore her and it's what she would want she would want you to pull your kids from their school and friends in an important school year to move cities and potentially live in a much smaller space with their mother unable to work or parent them as she used to?

@ledition My kids will never have to look after me. I'm not that horrible that I would put that on them.

Again this is where we obviously have a cultural divide and I think it's quite sad. You think it's "horrible" of you to expect care from your children. I think it's beautiful. Hard work? Absolutely. I've seen it done for my grandparents and it's an enormous amount of work but so with it. I've seen many people during their end of life care and I dont believe for one second that when your alone, abandoned in a nursing home with people on minimum wage, gagging while they wipe your arse, mocking you to their families later, taking the piss out of you to their "colleagues" that you'll really feel "OH SO HAPPY" that you didn't put this "burden" on your children - who you haven't seen in six months but who will crawl out like vermin in the end to see what's owed to them in the will. People need their families at the end and the ones who refuse to provide that comfort are the "horrible" ones not people like me who actually love their families.

she would want you to pull your kids from their school and friends in an important school year to move cities and potentially live in a much smaller space with their mother unable to work or parent them as she used to?. Jesus you clearly don't get it. I will DO WHAT IT TAKES, if she's incapacitated I will move her to me. I already have plans in place and she's nowhere near that yet. You people are callous!

who you haven't seen in six months but who will crawl out like vermin in the end to see what's owed to them in the will
You've got a very twisted view of families. Seems you think it's sacrifice your children's lives to care for your parents or be money grabbing vermin. There's a LOT of space between the two

@Ledition

she would want you to pull your kids from their school and friends in an important school year to move cities and potentially live in a much smaller space with their mother unable to work or parent them as she used to?. Jesus you clearly don't get it. I will DO WHAT IT TAKES, if she's incapacitated I will move her to me. I already have plans in place and she's nowhere near that yet. You people are callous!

You said you'd move or she'd move, not you'd make her move to you. What if she doesn't want to? As her feelings matter most, then what? Il

It's great you have a spare room kept aside for her but do you understand that not e everyone does? That you might not work / can afford to give up work but not everyone can?

My second pregnancy was twins so we have one bed space less than expected. We have three parents between us, not in a relationship with each other. Should we be expected to provide a room for them all? If you had sons instead of daughters, are you comfortable with them pro using intimate care to you?

Don't get me wrong, it's great you want to care for your mother in her infimity. But it's beyond ignorant to assume it's that simple for everyone

SleepingStandingUp yes there is space in between but the pps above seem outraged that they would be expected to look after their own mothers and I think that's incomprehensible. As I stated in my first post All I'm saying is that first and foremost it's your duty as a child to provide care for your parents if at all practicable. If they need around the clock intense care then nursing homes should obviously be used but not as a first port of call and I would be very, very disappointed in my children if they stuck me in a home the first chance they got and didn't even try to look after their mother. Something would have gone very wrong in my parenting if that happened as I can't even fathom doing that to my own lovely mum. That's it, that's all I'm saying it's really not controversial.

Don't get me wrong, it's great you want to care for your mother in her infimity. But it's beyond ignorant to assume it's that simple for everyone

Again - blue in the face here and battling tidal waves of cultural differences - it's not ignorance - it's priorities. You don't prioritize It. I do. I never said it would be simple. In fact I explicitly said it would be hard work but I'm prepared for that. You people aren't. That's fair enough but I'm glad I'm not in your families! I'll bow out here as I'm talking in to the void clearly I wish you well and I hope you don't live to regret your choices. Perhaps reevaluate the concept of family with your own DCs if you don't want to die alone.

I never said it would be simple. In fact I explicitly said it would be hard work but I'm prepared for that. You people aren't
Simple is not the opposite of hard.
DFIL had Parkinsons. We didnt have room here for him, we couldn't even fit a stair lift in our hallway. I thought a lot about what would happen if DMIL died first. If we could move into their etc. and how I'd manage caring for a medically complex child alongside a DFIL who I probably couldn't life alone if he fell (DH gets his height from his Dad). Never came to pass but I do think about DMIL now. She has two sons. She wouldn't be comfortable with her sons wiping her bum and bathing her intimate parts. DBIL is single. We couldn't now fit into her house and she definitely couldn't fit here with three young children. She could be moved into her box room, the three boys could squeeze into a double and it might be OK whilst they're little but in a decade you wouldn't fit two 12 and one 16 yo in there. It isn't the hard work of care that's the issue. It's the complexity of space. I assume you can afford to give up work tomorrow and have a spare room waiting. Great. But not everyone does. So in my case, how would we care for MIL in a decades time? One kid mid GCSE, two just started high school, me having to quit work would be managed by not paying rent but we still wouldn't fit in her house. I still have the children I bore to consider.

DFIL went into a home because MIL couldn't manage. She visited every day. DH visited weekly. DS visited a couple of times (he was 3ish) and me somewhere between that. DBIL at most weekly as he doesn't live near but still as much as he could. His equally elderly siblings visited at least weekly between them and we saw MIL at least weekly too. There's more than one way to be a lovely) loving family. No one here has suggested throwing them in a dirty care home at the first sign of an a he and only coming back for the will reading.

My ex-FIL in his late 70s was on 30 tablets a day, he didn’t want to take them and he said he felt like a zombie when he did. He wanted to be allowed to grow old and die naturally. His doctors and daughter insisted he keep on taking them.

While I completely understand his daughter wanting to keep him alive as long as possible he developed alzimers after his last of three strokes and she struggled to care for him as well on top of three kids as a single parent and a full time job for a few years until she finally couldn’t and put him in a home.

He’s still there and probably still on all the meds making sure he physically exist for as long as possible. While I fear assisted dying could lead to euthanasia booths in every Job Centre for the poor who dare to grow old or the old who dare to grow poor, I do think there must be a kinder way to all this and it starts with listening to those that it concerns