To be appalled at how this woman is treated

[justtrees]

My best friend and I were chatting today. His partners mum has broken her leg after a nasty trip over her dog.
She was in hospital for a couple of days following a bone reset and cast and the staff rang to collect her to bring her home.
Her adult children refused point blank.

His partners attitude was that the government could pay for her care and rehabilitation and meals as that is what they paid taxes for.
Her mum is 65, fit and generally healthy and lives alone.
Her mum is devastated as she has now been moved to a care home miles away from anyone of her family . They visit her once a week and refuse discharge until she is 'perfect' again.
Their mum was a SAHM all her life and devoted her life to her kids. Their Dad is dead. She needs minimal care but physio three times per week. She is mobile on crutches and
Can self care.

They are all shift workers, one with no kids, the others with teens so I'm pretty sure they could have supported her in her own home and offered her lifts or organised taxis between them.

Now my best friend and I go back thirty years and know each other inside out and each others families and hell would freeze over before he would allow that for his own mum and mine for the matter !
He was embarrassed telling me , probably not helped by my face showing absolute disbelief.
It has made me think about my own children and what they would do.
His partner is ok, a bit of a cold fish but he loves her so that's what matters .
AIBU to be appalled or is this becoming the norm now.

Why didn’t they just arrange hospital transport home? They send people home in worse states all the time!

But... its one broken leg - there has to be more to this story, she's only 65 and you say she's in good health - if she was 25 and this happened they wouldn't be offering a care home, surely?? Does she have no downstairs loo in her house or something and an inflexible cast up to the thigh or something - there has to be more to this.
The appointments thing I'm not sure what you are getting at - taxis and patient transport (if you can't afford a taxi) exist - yes it would be nice if someone helped her out but these things are doable without help.

Without knowing all the ins and outs, you can’t know for sure that this woman’s family are being awful.
Several years ago my mother had her first hip replacement just before Christmas. She was discharged and went to recuperate at my sister’s for a week. It was hideous for everyone. She then went home and I stepped in to do my bit. Our mother got bed sores because between us we didn’t know what we were doing. When it came to having her second hip op, we insisted she went to a care home to be properly looked after. No bed sores and competent people to help her get up and move about and do physio.

If she could care for herself, the hospital would have discharged her.

If she couldn't, it's unclear why you think her children would be best-suited to providing appropriate care for her.

I guess that's what people are struggling to understand.

Now she knows I would be coming home and refusing to do anything for them

I'm very surprised she isn't being discharged if the level of care needed is that simple. The NHS will discharge as many people as possible, my very elderly and infirm great grandmother is in her own home with carers visiting but she really needs round the clock care.

If she's being kept in it can't be the case that it's just a few sessions of physio she needs.

What you're saying happened is clear enough. But I think people are just confused why a fit 65yo needs carers for a broken leg or why it's her family's job to arrange it and why NOK are being involved for a 65yo with capacity who is compos mentis and not otherwise unwell. My dad is 68 and no way would I be arranging his care for a broken leg, he would do it himself! I doubt he would even contact me until he was back home, silly bugger that he is.

If he was elderly and lacked capacity then of course, but he isn't, he's perfectly capable of doing things for himself.

You must have had very in-depth conversation with your friend to know the exact ins and outs of a situation that isn't even his! I'd imagine something has got lost along the way.

I think you are right. At 68 I tripped and broke my ankle, I'm my husbands carer so I was off home at the first opportunity where I cooked, did the washing/washing up, supervised DHs med. All as normal, well the house was probably in need of a good vacuum and the bathroom wasn't immaculate by the time I finished physio but it was all good enough.

I went up and downstairs sitting on the steps but other than that it was OK, had the shopping delivered, GC called in and did stuff like cutting the grass.

At 65 they won't have put her in a care home for a broken leg and I certainly didn't need anyone's permission to be discharged.

To be fair, in my area there is currently a 4-week wait to get a home care package set up because of a shortage of carers. If the hospital desperately needed the bed, they could have proposed a care home - although clearly the lady could refuse if you felt she could manage unsupported.

You've obviously never had to deal with an elderly parent in hospital and all the complications that go with it regarding aftercare, patient transport, physio, carers etc. It's really not a case of children refused to let her home and now she's stuck in a residential home. There'll be a lot more that you're not aware of.

Have you changed details so this isn't outing? Because a dislocated hip, may necessitate a short term stay in a care home, a broken bone and the patient on crutches, well that would be extremely unusual, especially in England where you have to have very high level needs to get any type of funding.
So either, you're not being told the full story, or you've changed some of the details.

Something doesn't add up here because MIL broke her leg at 68 and they sent her home no questions asked. Does your friend sometimes lie/exaggerate?

Where does she normally reside? In her own home? As pp have said this makes no sense, you have got 3rd hand information and clearly it's not accurate.

They do a frailty score on people and assess their care needs before deciding they need the expensive round the clock care given by a care home. They don't just put any random sick person in a care home just because they live alone.

Also if she has full mental capacity then no next of kin has any right to decide anything for her.

What significance to this is that she was a SAHM?
I broke my ankle a few years back (age mid 50s) my DH took a couple of days off work while I acclimatised and then I was on my own all day. I was on crutches and a neighbour lent me a wheelchair. I coped perfectly well. I worked out how to shuffle up and down the stairs on my bum and I was able to wash myself leaning against the sink. I could wash my hair with no problem. Everything just took a little while to work out.
This is a strange post and there must be more to it, although it's a bit shitty to expect the government to pay fees to look after those who are capable of looking after themselves. Surely the kids don't work 24/7 and could call in once or twice a day between them.
That's what people did back in the days when folk looked out for their own.
Many don't seem.to give a shit now.

The only thing I would say is that when you get discharged from hospital into either someone's care or in your own home with social services help, then the physio is non existent. You'll get a sheet of exercises and forgotten. So while she is in a care home (it would actually be a rehabilitation care home, not an older person's care home), then she would get better and more targeted physio and after care. I speak from experience. So perhaps refusing to take her was more about understanding that once she was discharged then she would not be taken care of by clinicians.

This is one of the things I don’t get.
There are without doubt details of this story that the OP’s friend has misunderstood or misinterpreted. Or he’s holding something back.

I do wonder if there is more to the story than your friend has been told. Maybe their partner is trying to shield them from the truth.

Or else your friends partner and his family are selfish/unable to cope or manage etc. If it is purely put of selfish view maybe your friend should consider their relationship and what would happen if they were in this ladies position.

I got fantastic physio support when I was discharged with a broken ankle, elderly relative discharged to her care home got no physio at all. The hospital said it was up to the care home, they did what they could but they weren't physios.

Something doesn't add up here tbh. It seems really really unlikely that the authority would fund a care home place rather than a care package at home for a straightforward broken leg with no other issues.
Patient transport is available to take patients home, and to appointments and I the maximum care package on offer is 4 visits a day - including washing, dressing and getting ready for bed.

The stuff about "the hospital needing to find her a bed" and "not getting her home until she's perfect" sound like Daily Mail headline fodder 🙄

i also wouldnt be so quick to judge
perhaps they need to work to keep a roof over their head and cant get time off
perhaps there is a break down in the relationship

I'm another one who agrees this doesn't make sense. To add to PPs, if she has a cast on her leg then she won't be receiving physio! She won't have gone to a rehab bed as won't be fit for rehab. She won't have gone to a care home funded by the government if she has no care needs.

The only thing I can think of is that she may have gone to a "non-weightbearing bed" which is actually funded by the NHS.

I think it sounds like you don't have all the facts but no, I don't think it's overly shitty for adult children to have to give up their own lives for weeks to look after their mum if they're not in a position to do so.

I wouldn’t be so quick to judge- you don’t know their side. My mother is a fairly awful individual and a terrible mother who would never go out her way to help anyone.

This is nonsense. As a competent adult she was entirely capable of discharging herself and booking a taxi home. Not a cat in hell's chance she's gone into a care home because her next of kin refused her discharge.