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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Hospital discharge care packages

27 replies

Eyeofthetigers · 07/07/2023 23:50

Hi all

just looking for help or experiences
mum had a fall possible hip fractured and has heart failure
hospital says she can’t go home alone
I’m not in a position to help sue to having my dd, my own health and care needs and needing to work
my mum is a hoarder and won’t allow anyone into her home. I have offered to clear this

what will be the care options? She won’t want to go to a care home she’ll never forgive me but equally if I have to care for her I won’t cope longer than a day

OP posts:
EliflurtleTripanInfinite · 08/07/2023 01:57

Eyeofthetigers · 08/07/2023 01:12

But if she declines all help they can’t enforce it can they
I’m sure she will be deemed to have capacity

No they can't force her and neither can you make her listen let alone make her make the right choices. The people we love sometimes make really bad choices, she has capacity and she is free to make unsafe and dangerous choices. All you can do is draw your boundaries, make the situation crystal clear to the hospital and then step back and stick to your boundaries. As an adult with capacity she is free to make her own decisions and she (not you) alone is responsible for the consequences of decisions she makes.

Elleherd · 08/07/2023 09:19

If you tell hospital, and preferably documenting everything, then they know that sending her to her home will be an unsafe discharge.
I was surprised to hear of stepdown hospitals being closed as they've been the cheap answer for some time to bed-blocking, but each authority makes different choices to stay afloat.. It's worth seeing what exists in your health authority area. They are sometimes refered to as rehab units when actually being stepdown with rehab.
She is highly likely to be entitled to six weeks of re-enablement care at home, if enough space can be made.

You talk about going and clearing your mum's home, which is why she's not letting you do anything. It's her worst nightmare; being forcibly cleared and not there to make any choices, or have discretion and her dignity be maintained in her neighborhood.
If she's coming towards the end of her time she may well want to just go out peacefully with things as they are.

Assuming the home is just hoarded with too much stuff, (rather than a collapsing squalor hoard) then what she needs right now, is enough moved from one room, corridors to bathroom, and bathroom, and a microwave, and it's possible for carers to attend. (Quite a frequent solution in hoarding and carers)
If you approach her with moving stuff, not chucking stuff, you have a better chance of co-operation, though it doesn't sound like there's a happy relationship to try and build on.
You are entitled to lay out what you can and will do, and what you cant and wont, and hold those boundaries, and she is entitled to have her boundaries including around the visual results of her MH condition and accept the lesser of bad consequences as she rates them.

Hoarding is the visible symptom of a complex MH condition, it doesn't make the person lack capacity. We are entitled to make poor decisions, unsafe decisions, and decisions that make little sense to others as long as we have capacity..

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