To find elderly care very depressing

[Dontworrybehappyyy]

I've recently started working in an office-based role for a domiciliary care company, and without fail we have clients or their families ringing up daily to ask why their morning call was at 11:30am and bedtime call at 6PM .

A lot of it is down to lack of staff, I know some people will say 'they should just accept it' but these people are often paying a lot of money for the care.

Another complaint is that there's often a different carer going every time and they never know who's going to turn up. Or a bed call 1 hour after the tea call, or carers staying 5 minutes of a 30 minute call (sometimes clients do send carers away)

I've worked as a home care assistant before so I know exactly what I like, is isn't valued as a career and it's seen as a woman's job. Some companies do offer salaried roles and guaranteed hours but many don't, and carers never know what theyll earn but are expected to be available 7am to 10pm.

It's just depressing really but I don't see anything changing, and it's so wrong.

I can totally see why you feel like this - I would too. But while it’s such an under paid, under appreciated job, I suspect nothing will change. Well done you for doing such a challenging role and trying to make a difference.

I used to nurse in this area and it’s not changed in the last 15+ years. You’re not wrong. From the title, I expected it to be more about how it’s a revolving door in hospitals. Equally depressing! Very disheartening but unless you’re paying for private care, you can rarely pick your times for care visits.

It’s grim isn’t it. Our poor old people.

It's unsafe giving the medication so close together, and it means they're sometimes left in the same incontinence pad for 14 hours or more.

It's absolutely awful service from some companies, particularly the ones the councils use. We had a doorbell camera at my MILs house and they were staying less than 5 minutes some days.

We found our own in the end and they were very good but it became unaffordable for her needs. Elderly care needs fixing, I hope Burnham follows through with his plans.

The lady in the flat opposite me has recently come out of hospital after a fall. Her morning carer arrives any time between 7am and 10am, her lunch is any time between 11am and 2pm and she’s usually in bed by 7pm. They are in and out within 15 minutes and are forever putting her soiled incontinence underwear in the recycling bin 🤢

I feel so sorry for her.

I used to work as a carer and the person who did the weekly rotas didn't drive. And a lot of the visits would be 2 carers so you'd either be late or stood waiting for the other to arrive. By 10am most days I was running at least an hour late if not more, and would be met by indignant relatives asking why. I would start at 7am and not any break until around 3pm when all the lunch visits were done. Then you started off again at 4.30pm until 11pm with the tea time and bed visits. It was relentless. I put 24k miles on my car in a year covering a fairly small geographical area. Hence doing 14 months of it on a zero hours contract that effectively meant 46 hours a week when I'd asked for a maximum of 20 .... never again.

If the company has a lack of staff they shouldn’t be agreeing to take on so many clients leading to such terrible care. Greed is the issue. They could pay more to attract more staff or keep their offering within their ability to provide.

If the companies paid their staff more and had realistic expectations of what they expected staff to achieve when taking travel into account, perhaps staff would stay.

My neighbours a few doors away have just got rid of their parents carers, the council swapped companies to i assume cheaper, and they were in and out in 10 minutes not making sure the person ate. And all sorts, they are not blaming the actual carers but definitely blaming the care company. The neighbours children are in their 60s and trying to struggle caring for a nearly 100 year old parent !

I think people become like boiled frogs they get more and more ill ,lonely abandoned and just exist on.
Does anyone here look forward to this ? Having ten mins with any random in your home who could be doing anything !

Totally agree OP,my mother is on a nursing home now and it's such better value than the 4x a day care package she had before. It's woeful.

Well, realistically, it would be quite a shitty job if you were only guaranteed work between 8am and 9am, and 9pm and 10pm because that's when all clients prefer to get up and go to bed. Of course if clients were prepared to pay £80 per visit that would work but, failing that, not every one will get the time not they prefer.

When my stepmother had a fall, she was found by her carer, who called an ambulance and waited with her til it came. I guess that carers other clients got a late visit or a substitute carer that day.

The whole care system is balanced between what clients want, what they are willing or able to pay, and what carers are willing to provide/the hours they are willing and able to work. Seems like no one gets exactly what they want.

Hugs op, it is terrible but until carers are paid the way they should be staff retention will always be a thing and so people can’t have continuity which would be ideal obviously x

Yep, youve summed it up. Its s*. Unless whole system is overhauled it will only get worse.

It is wrong , it’s really awful. And it’s no wonder there is a lack of staff

My ancient friend has been discharged home with ‘carers’ coming in twice a day. The most they seem able to do is put cereal and milk in a bowl and make a cup of tea and ask him if he’s taken his pills.
Things they don’t do:
walk with him to the sofa so he has a change of scene.
Put cooked food that I have brought on a plate for him
make him a sandwich
change the bed
empty the commode
he can only walk with his walker and won’t on his own as he’s afraid of falling so they just leave him in his bed hungry.
he should be in a nursing home, I don’t know how much more incapacitated he needs to be before they decide he’s eligible.
he was over six feet in life and now he weighs 59kgs. End of life care it is not.

I had a family member in a residential home then a care home. It was awful, he wasn't old old, early 70's. I don't know about care in the home, but a lot has to change across the whole sector. I guess there is a lot of parallels to both home and care home.

Different staff every time we visited, some with very poor English language. Relative's glasses and hearing aids always missing. Clothing missing. Never taken out, maybe too much of a risk, but it did remind me of a prison, but paying £1700 - £2800 per week for the privilege.

Given the new PM's speech a few weeks ago about the NHS and Social Care, which did sound quite hopeful, but lets hope something finally changes. He did mention care staff need to be paid more. Who knows how it can all be changed for the better.

I was a S/Worker for a L/A they had in house care workers for many years, it was a great service but expensive so to save costs they contracted the service out to agencys that's when i feel it all went downhill.

NC for this but 25 years ago, age 18 I started working in a NHS rehabilitation centre for elderly people who had suffered accidents (mostly broken bones) and weren't mobile enough to go home.

I was supposed to be doing training alongside the shifts, i think the role was healthcare support worker or something like that. I remember doing a first aid course and a lifting one too but thats about as far as it went whilst I was there.

There were supposed to be 2 nurses. 2 Trained/qualified support staff and then 2 of us trainees who were NOT supposed to count in the 'numbers'

My God. The amount of times me and another trainee were left to our own devices and were counted in the numbers as trained staff was crazy.

They had me (at 18 and pretty bloody dumb) doing OBS without training and I was NEVER told what the numbers meant. I would take BP/ pulse and just write it down. They could have been having heart attacks for all I knew. All I was told was 'write it down'

I was left to winch naked elderly women in and out of the bath on my own with no training.

My first day they sent me into the room of a younger (30ish) gentleman with Downs syndrome who was lay on the bed completely naked getting his nappy changed. My very first day. I'm sure they did it on purpose to see my reaction.

The worst bit for me was the complete lack of humanity and the fucking repetition in those poor peoples lives. All they had was the TV and cups of tea.

I was shouted at by the head nurse because I sat with a scared woman who had a broken leg, whilst she cried and showed me a wartime photo of her husband who she had just lost weeks before. I held her hand and listened for a few minutes and got shouted at for it. Honestly. I was told we don't have time for all that.

Its was the worst few months of my life. I couldn't hack it. I just couldn't. I was 18 and I felt sick every moment I was in that building.

I won't ever go in a place like that

The day I had enough I wore my normal clothes (not uniform so I couldn't be dragged into staying) and walked up to the head nurse and told her I was quitting. She was livid and said I was so selfish as the numbers for that shift were wrong now meaning she was counting me again as staff instead of trainee and I looked her dead in the eye and said that I was supposed to be surplus to the numbers anyway as I was not trained. She looked very shocked and I just walked out.

As part of my job I had to inspect an NHS care home for 65+ year olds living with dementia and/or complex needs.

Although the home met the basic requirements of care and safety, it was so depressing. Residents in nappies just plonked infront of the TV. Bedrooms bare and looking like prison cells. Hardly any therapeutic activities apart from a small “library” corner in a lounge. Which was just an armchair and a small book shelf. Absolutely depressing place.

It sounds awful, and is exactly the reason why I would rather go into a home when the time comes I need all this help. I'm not in the UK btw, homes here, at least in my town, are not as bad as some in the UK appear to be, they have lots of activities and the care is good.

My aunty was a home help as they were called here in the 80s into the 90s worked for the LA she had her regular clients and had time to do her job, she retired early because her department was put it to contract she said it was never the same.

I'm petrified of getting frail in old age. I don't want to live like that.

I don't know who will sort it all out for me if I outlive my husband as I don't want children and I don't think having children to be carers is the right thing to do.

I'll probably fall down the stairs one day or something and be found when the neighbours report a bad smell!