To think it’s really sad how many care home residents don’t get visitors?

[RoomByTheWindow]

I recently read something that said a huge percentage of care home residents never get a single visitor. No family, no friends - not even during holidays or birthdays. That’s stayed with me.

I know every situation is different. Some families are far away, some relationships are strained. But still, the idea that people can live out their final years with so little human contact feels bleak. Even a short visit or a card can mean the world.

I’m not trying to guilt-trip anyone. I just think we don’t talk enough about what it means to age in a society where people are too busy, too distant or too uncomfortable to show up.

AIBU to feel really unsettled by this and to think more of us should be checking in?

It is in a way, if they are nice people. However, horrible people don't stop being horrible just cos they're elderly and in a home.

I can think of a few in my relative's case home who certainly don't deserve visitors.

I volunteer for a charity who send handmade cards every month to care home residents who have no one, and gift hampers at Christmas and Easter. It's very rewarding.

Oh that's lovely. Something I'd maybe like to get involved with. Would you mind dropping me the name of the charity in a message, please? Thanks very much.

Yes, this. I’ve worked in various care home and NHS settings, and the neurological damage which comes with dementia is weird. So it’s absolutely true that downright horrible people sometimes end up quite nice. Unfortunately it can occasionally go the other way, which is extremely distressing for families.

That said, I think visits are still worthwhile if they can be managed, even if they are brief and the main function is only to let the underpaid and overworked staff know that someone appreciates their hard work and patience.

I really hope that if/when my brain starts to go, I mostly lose the parts where the character flaws and irritating habits are stored!

You don’t know how many are supported in their own home by loving caring children.

My parents were nasty abusers currently 85 and 80 in their own home and I haven’t seen them for over 5 years. If and when they go in a care home - on them. I will not visit. Nothing can repair the physical and emotional damage they did to me. My parents often used the carrot of their money and 5 years ago enough for enough and they can shove it where the sun don’t shine.

My mother in law however is 85 and living with DH’s brother, I love her and adore her and send her flowers once a month and I write weekly and phone x3 a week. She offered my DH £5 K to help with our general day to day expenses as my husband retired. We said no and will continue to say no. We don’t want her money. If she phones (she is 3 hour drive away) and needs us we would go at 2 am. I will gladly let her move in with us and it’s not for money. I love her. She will not (I hope ever go in a care home) but if she does - we will be there!

There might be lots of reasons people get few or no visitors. When my MIL was in a specialist nursing home before she died, most of the residents had very high care needs, and could only be catered for in that particular home. We were lucky in that it was only a few miles from our house, and quite close to her own home too, so she had visitors every day. Some days, at weekends especially, the entire page of the visitors book was filled up with our names, and our names only.
I have no way of knowing the circumstances of the other residents, how far away they lived, or what their previous relationships were like. But I do know that for the most part, they didn't wander about hoping their spouses or children would show up. Mostly they wanted their mums and dads. MIL was the same. Oh, she remembered who we were sometimes, but she would swear we hadn't been there for weeks, and neither had her husband or other children.

It's very very difficult, and I know I've judged other people before I knew better. We used to visit an elderly friend who was placed in a home by her son. She would ask us when he was coming to see her; sometimes she wanted to check if she'd ever had a son at all, and we thought that he was at fault for abandoning her there. I don't think that any more.

We have a very small family. I visit a widowed 92yo aunt with dementia in a care home every month. It's a 5hr round trip. She has only 5 family members left who are scattered worldwide. I'm the nearest to her. She had no DC and she's the last of her generation, all her friends and siblings/in laws have died. She recognises my face but doesn't know my name and has forgotten her parents and dh died many years ago. In some ways it's a blessing that she's forgotten the sadness of losing them. She's like a young child now really - always asking if we've seen her DPs recently. We just go along with her latest confabulation about them being at work so they can't visit her right now. Sometimes she says she's seen them (in a dream?) We look through the old family pictures and she tells me stories (real or imagined who knows). She's probably forgotten we've visited the minute we're out of eyesight.

There but for the grace of god go I.

Its not always about not liking your relatives! As I said in my first post, I went regularly to visit my grandmother (who I was very fond of), but when you've just finished a long day at work and then have to drive an hour and a half to go and see someone who a) certainly won't recognise you and b) may refuse to talk to you completely and then you have to do an hour and a half drive back home and finally get something to eat at just before 10pm, it is very hard not to question what the actual point of you putting all that effort in is. Absolutely no-one was benefitting. Its pure obligation and guilt.

Another poster summed it up on the first page. The cruelty is not that they get no visitors, the cruelty is keeping them alive in such a state.

I gave my next-door neighbour lifts to see her husband in hospital. When I asked her son did he not want to accompany us - he wasn't working and had had his car crushed - "Oh, I don't like to see my dad like that."

The son was a middle-aged man.

I always think that people like that have taught their children how to treat them when the time comes.

My DM is currently on end of life care in her own home. I've lived with her for five years now. She always said that without my company she'd have had to go into a care home. I'm proud that this hasn't been necessary.

My brother's FIL did go into a home but his DD and my brother visited every week. That's because he was a darling.

A family member of mine wanted to put his mother in a care home near where he worked (different city to the one we all live in) because it was easier for him to visit on his way home. He was the only one who mattered and didnt care about her friends or extended family who said they wouldn't be able to travel to see her.

Relationships are earned. I tend to think if someone has a good relationship with that person they will want to visit them if they can.

I see this kind of thing sometimes.. I don't get why anyone (older or not,) would want handmade cards from strangers. I also don't get the visiting thing. People volunteering to visit random older people in care homes who they don't know. Why do these people want strangers visiting them? And why does anyone actually want to visit a stranger?

Err, company?

It definitely varies.
Some people have been awful and selfish to relatives in the past so do reap what they sow.
Fir others they do not deserve to be left lonely and alone,
I know of many people who shoulder the burden of caring for their ill relatives, whilst their siblings don’t do anything.
Many people are only in it for what they can grab from their relatives. It’s shocking.

Sometimes people automatically assume elderly people are nice. Because of how they look. If my father ends up in a residential facility, I won't visit him. Because I don't visit him now anyway. He was an appalling father. Abusive, selfish, neglectful, bullying. But he makes a good job of appearing to be a nice person. And I can quite imagine people thinking I'm mean for not visiting - but they'll just have to think that. I know it isn't true and I have to not care what other people think.

This.
What a depressing thread. Agism and blame.

When I read the OP I thought of my limited experience while visiting a relative. I've been trying to find a volunteering role and this was something I have considered. Although as some have said living alone at home is even more lonely. I have a couple of friends who have "adopted" and old person and visit them. I wonder if there's any organisation that does that?

Company? What do you even say to each other? You don't know each other. Personally, if I was alone - in a home, or in my own home, I certainly wouldn't want random people I don't know coming to 'keep me company.' It would be so bloody awkward.

Some lonely older people were horrible younger people.
Some older people don't want a stream of visitors.
Some older people don't recognise their relatives.
Some families live abroad.
Etc, etc.

Of course it's not ageism! The whole thread is about older/elderly people in care homes, so of course people are going to be talking about older people!

It's a very typical defense mechanism when someone points out something such as "elderly people are often alone" to leap in with your story explaining why your elderly person is alone as if that explains why all elderly people are alone. Which a lot of people have done on this thread. Everyone is being very defensive to a statement made that by their own argument actually has nothing to do with them.

This! ^ Not all older/elderly people in care homes who get no visitors, are lovely, kind, friendly, warm, affable people who have cold, uncaring, thoughtless younger relatives who CBA to visit them!

Some older people don’t recognise their loved ones so I can understand them not travelling great distances or flying in from abroad in a regular basis .

Surely if they are in a care home they do get human contact though. That’s the point of them being there. It’s the elderly that stay in their own homes that don’t get to see anyone. My mums next door neighbour never gets any visitors. I have no idea why she seems lovely.

Yeah, she may 'seem lovely' but you don't know what she's really like (or what she has been like in the past to her children/family.)