Anyone else with housebound elderly parent/relative and how are you coping during this?

[MGMidget]

My DF is very elderly with cancer and dementia. He is reliant on carers, a cleaner, someone to shop for him etc as well as family visits. Nearly all this has stopped as a result of coronavirus. The cleaner wont come now, his neighbour wont shop for him, we cant get any home deliveries and even if we could the food would have to wait somewhere outside ifor the next carers visit and weather is getting warmer now. Social services say family must do the shopping but we live along way away and have been self isolating. I am wondering if others are in the same boat as us? DF is a particularly fussy eater at the moment owing to his illness and the numerous medicines he has to take. He is wasting away and clothes are falling off him. He wouldnt eat meals on wheels when we tried them previously. We are very worried he is going to be leftin a state of hunger and neglect if all family are self isolated, cant get foid to him and the carers visits become erratic or stop completely. Heneeds fourvisits a day at the moment and I cant just ‘pop’ over as its an hours drive each way. Anyone else with similar problems to us?

Under the circumstances I’d bring him to stay temporarily. It’s the only way he’ll get the care he needs.

Not now no, so can understand how the present circumstances are making it triply difficult, but my father was in the same position a couple of years ago so know how much care he needs. At least I didn’t have the virus to contend with & lived within an hour’s drive so could visit most days to Di the things the careers hadn’t bothered to do.
As all your fathers support system is breaking down h e really could do with being in residential care temporarily till the support can come back ( hoping it eventually will). I would suggest ringing the social services local to him & explaining his situation, stress that he really can’t manage & is very likely to end up in hospital either from self neglect or should he have a fall. It won’t be easy, they aren’t always as helpful as you’d hope. I had real problems just getting my dad a carer & had to pay for one. But my dad had a serious fall at home which resulted in him being in hospital & only once there did the system kick start to get him help via the hospital social team. But currently they won’t want to burden hospitals with a patient who could have been prevented from ending up there with the right care south coukd stress that to give a bit of leverage to get him into temporary residential care. Good luck & hope he’s ok, it’s such a worry.

You need to really reiterate to social services that you can't take over his care due to distance.

Meeting a brick wall with social services. Db is about half hour drive away and doing shopping plus did cleaning yesterday. His job is suffering though. It isnt sustainable. Also if any of the his household get ill they will be self-isolated. Other nearby family are permanently self isolated owing to pregnancy and asthma, Carers come 4 times a day but historically they have done a poor job so family need to visit as much as possible to pick up the pieces. Plus, DF has lots of toilet accidents owing to medication giving him diahorrea. They give him laxatives because of impact of medicines but then seem to judge it wrong. I am worried care system is going to break down, visits be reduced or stopped completely! Unfortunately moving Dad to our house will be a big problem because his home has been adapted for his mobility issues. Ours isn’t and he would really struggle. We have lots of stairs. He needs a stair lift, hand rails etc. He needs aspecial bed which was constructed at his house. We don’t have a spare bedroom either and young children.