Coronavirus and care homes

[WinnieHarlow]

Having just read the awful situation where 15 residents in a care home have died, surely allowing loved ones to visit could exacerbate this situation? Its a dreadful situation. Is a solution to seek alternative accommodation for the loved one in care, until Covid is over?

Didn't that 70yo? woman get arrested for removing her 94 yo mother?
People in care homes very often need 24/7 care. They can't be cared for in private homes unless you have a lot of people in your household who would be willing to do lots of personal care for them.

Newborns require 24/7 care - I would argue that it could be achievable in private homes, and perhaps this option should be supported /funded - eg carers allowance.

Good luck finding alternative provision.
Care homes are closing.
Hospitals have now been told they have to have two negative tests back before they can discharge people to care homes - creating a dearth of beds and silting up flow out of intensive care and for elective admissions etc.
Some areas have no designated beds for C+ patients being discharged.
Most people in care homes have very complex needs. It’s not just a few people playing bridge with their meals cooked and someone looking after their medicines. It’s distressed behaviour, hearing and site loss, immobility, fragile skin, double incontinence. Not easy to manage in a granny annexe.

There is a careers allowance available but changing a 17 stone person who is covered in faeces, spitting and scratching isn’t quite the same as wiping a newborn’s bottom with a few baby wipes.

But it's not just feeding, burping and changing nappies. There's often a substantial amount of medical assistance going on, health management, and I know from experience that looking after a person with dementia 24/7 is a very different thing to looking after a newborn! If alternative accommodation was possible, it is highly unlikely that the person in care would, in fact, be in a care home in the first place.

@WinnieHarlow

Newborns require 24/7 care - I would argue that it could be achievable in private homes, and perhaps this option should be supported /funded - eg carers allowance.

Newborns weigh a few lbs. Grown adults who need help getting in and out of bed, onto the toilet and into the bath etc weigh considerably more. If they are different dementia or something similar they can be very confused and aggressive. It's nothing like caring for a newborn

Also my auntie is a paid carer for my nanna who has advanced kidney disease and my grandad who has dementia. She is on her knees and said she can't do it much longer.

I think you are describing extreme needs - and many people in homes are not as you describe. Many cultures would not even consider care homes as an option, and support within the family.

Most people in care homes have very complex needs. It’s not just a few people playing bridge with their meals cooked and someone looking after their medicines

Most people in "nursing" homes have complex needs. Many people in care homes are just very old, and in fact do just need someone to cook and clean for them. DM is in one such, as it is actually cheaper than paying for a 24 hour career in your own home. These are the people who really miss their relatives visiting. In normal times they see people, go out on trips, shop, socialise. They are used to having some freedoms. Now to protect others in the home, they are effectively locked in with no freedoms.

Exactly @Baaaahhhhh - it’s these people I am referring to, those that could be cared for in a private home.

@Jrobhatch29 you took the words right out of my mouth. It's nothing like looking after a baby. My 6'1'' DC is in a care home.

@WinnieHarlow

Newborns require 24/7 care - I would argue that it could be achievable in private homes, and perhaps this option should be supported /funded - eg carers allowance.

It's not remotely the same.

I work in a care home, these people aren't babies that can just adapt and cope living somewhere else and can't just be moved somewhere else until this is over. Many people living in care homes live there because their families can't do the lions share of the care, the person might not be safe to be left alone in the day or at night. Care homes are 24/7. We do not stop. We have staff awake and ready for every eventuality. For many people in care homes its not simply a case of you feed them, change them and put them down for the night, very often with elderly people and people with cognitive or complex needs they sleep less, they don't sleep a full night, they're up at 3.30am having a cup of tea with us, they cat nap. Who will be up with them all night if they're at home?

Care work is tiring, which is why care teams are just that. Teams. We have separate day and night teams and work three or four days or nights a week because carers need a break. There's no break for family caregivers providing care at home, especially during covid.

The rules surrounding not allowing visitors into care homes is to protect the residents and the staff. Whether we as care providers agree with them or not is irrelevant, it's current policy, and frankly we have got much bigger worries. For many of us, we know an outbreak means that we lose people. One of our homes had an outbreak in the first wave & lost 14 residents in 7 days. That level of loss is something none of us has ever experienced or imagined and it's devastating. It's a catch 22 because whilst shut the home is the safest place for them. But it covid gets in, its no longer safe but we can't move people out due to the risk of spreading infection 🤷🏻‍♀️

Everyone focuses on the lack of visits, but need to look closer at the shoddy support and advice we have been given, the lack of reliable staff testing let alone the complete a sense of visitor testing that we were promised that never came, the govt took away our ppe (seized at shipment and redirected to NHS hospitals), and then we took pressure from all angles to accept untested residents from the NHS. Care home residents and staff have been forgotten about and failed in this. We as carers are struggling and taking flack fr all angles right now, whilst still going to work everyday and doing our best to stave off the loneliness of them not having relatives visit.

@WinnieHarlow

Exactly *@Baaaahhhhh* - it’s these people I am referring to, those that could be cared for in a private home.

I think we’ll intentioned but naive. Many family members work and can’t provide full time care. Doing it outside the person’s family or home brings them into the scope for regulation. They’d need to register as......a Care home.

@monkeytennis97 my baby analogy was to the poster referring to 24/7 care. I’m not referring to extreme situations, I’m referring to residents as @Baaaahhhhh describes.

That was longer than I anticipated

Also, what pps are describing is not "nursing homes" it's residential care homes aswell. The majority of people in our care across all of our 12 homes are not just people who need someone to cook and clean for them. Typically people will manage at home, or with home help, until they simply cannot any more.

WinnieHarlow DM could move back home. She has an empty house. But then who cares for her? She won't sleep alone, and then she also won't have access to her husband who is in the care home with her, and does have additional needs. Careers are the ones spreading the disease. They move from house to house. It's not their fault, it's the nature of the role, and more contacts means more risk. At least in DM's home they are all permanent careers to that home only, which reduces the risk. It's very complex, and there is no happy solution for anyone.

@CherryPavlova my mother has recently had a major operation for cancer, and is living with a stoma. I made the decision not to return to work and look after her with my 1 year old, and 9 year old. I gave up work, and we are scrimping as a family - as if I’d returned to work, she would have put herself in a care home. So I do have recent experience, not naive.

The residents bahhhh describes are actually few and far between as usually people who are self funding so they could chose to move out into a relatives accommodation if they wished.

Most residents is care homes need assistance with moving and handling and/or have comped needs eg dementia or risk of falls which means they literally need someone with them 24/7 otherwise they wouldn't be there.

For most people a care home is a last resort and therefore the burden of care on their family would be large.

You have a newborn baby in your 20s/30s most of my care home patients their families are in their 60s/70s. Their children will be working or have children of their own. The cultures that keep their relatives at home generally have large multigenerational homes where the care is shared out to multiple adults. That isn't the case for most families.

I'm a nurse in a nursing home . All of the residents are there because they all have complex needs . Most are there as the family's couldn't cope with the aggression shown by their 88 year mother with dementia and there other attention that they needs. Some are there as they have no family to care for them and some of there are because they want the company .
It's certainly not like looking after a new born baby.
Out of 60 residents they're are only 4 people that don't have dementia

I also have a close friend who works, and cares for her elderly Dad who has repeated water infections, falls, has dementia. It’s incredibly hard work for her - but she has chosen this over a care home in Covid times.

[quote WinnieHarlow]@CherryPavlova my mother has recently had a major operation for cancer, and is living with a stoma. I made the decision not to return to work and look after her with my 1 year old, and 9 year old. I gave up work, and we are scrimping as a family - as if I’d returned to work, she would have put herself in a care home. So I do have recent experience, not naive.[/quote]
Your mum wouldn't have needed to go into a care home just due to a stoma and you say that would've been her choice (unless there are other complex needs you haven't revealed) she would've had support in her own home from community nursing and carers.

People usually go into a care home when they cannot be supported by x4 visits a day in their own home if state funded.

@WinnieHarlow ok but my DC does need 24 hour care. Maybe one or other of us is confused.

@mrsswayze my baby analogy was wrong! I was referring to 24/7 - not extreme situations. Looking after my mother recently was comparable to the energy needed for a newborn. I’m nearly 50 - but it was do-able. As I said previously, had I not been there she would have been in a care home.

@knackersknockersknickers She was considering this option herself - yes. I think she has undiagnosed dementia. We could -as a family, particularly if I was working, used this option, we all live at least a 2hr drive away.

@WinnieHarlow

Newborns require 24/7 care - I would argue that it could be achievable in private homes, and perhaps this option should be supported /funded - eg carers allowance.

Don't be ridiculous. Equating newborn care with elderly care.Loooking elderly people with high care needs is physically very hard work . My mother needed a hoist to go to the bathroom. The process could take 15-30 mins of time each time and was repeated every 3-4 hours day and night ( though at night sometimes she was forced to use a bed pan which she hated)

The physical work involved looking after adults is much higher and usually the family member doing it is much older than a new parent . It is not the same at all