Complaint to care home

[Arthurflecksfacepaint]

We went to visit my father yesterday. He has vascular dementia, walks with the aid of a frame.

He was in the main living area and we noticed he wasn’t wearing his glasses.

We took him to his room and he said that his glasses were all smashed and broken. Dh went to ask a member of staff, we were told they were busy and would come and speak to us.

In the mean time, my dd found my dads glasses under his bed. Not smashed or broken, just wedged under the frame.

We also found his old pair of glasses with one lens hanging out - it turns out he’d been trying to wear these. I don’t know why he still had these. They broke just after he went into the home last year and an optician visited and he got a new pair.

I Spoke to a carer who said she’d seen him walking around with the broken glasses. I said why on Earth did no one arrange an optician to come in if you thought they were broken, she just said “i don’t know, I’ve been off”.

She also started saying how poor the communication was in the home, just like other staff have told me and that she wasn’t surprised that nothing had been done.

I don’t know how long he’s been wandering around with no glasses on or ones which are broken. We couldn’t visit last sunday as we were all sick, so hadn’t been in two weeks.

The glasses were wedged right under his bed, my 8 year old found them.

He can’t see well and walks with a frame - surely this is a fall risk. So why on Earth were they letting him wander around?

I didn’t call today as I am so frustrated. I’ve told the manager countless times that staff have raised poor communication with us which they have, all I get is “my staff wouldn’t say that”. They do. All I ever get is “I can only apologise IF xyz happened”. I am sick to death of it. Everything he’s ever worked for in his life is going on being in this home. It’s not good enough.

Another visiting family member overheard and came into my dads room to tell us that they kept losing her mothers 3k hearing aids and no one tells them, they keep having to buy new ones.

He’s paying 1,300 a week and I am not happy with him wandering round with no glasses, or his old broken ones and no one doing anything about it.

I’m also fed off of the staff telling me how bad the management are and the management brushing it off like I’m mad.

I need to make a complaint but I always end up being treated like the arsehole in these situations. I am so beaten down with it.

Can anyone help me please?

To add, his eyesight without his glasses is very poor and he walks with a frame due to sever arthritis in his knees. He shouldn’t be walking around with no glasses on.

The care home will have a complaints policy - doubtless it will say complain in writing to the care home in the first instance. If you're making a complaint think about what you want them to actually do as a result, and make sure it's something tangible (eg have a sign in his room saying he wears glasses; keep a spare pair in the office, whatever) or you'll just get fluff and excuses.

Alternatively you could raise it as a safeguarding issue - again, info on their website probably, or google the local council.

My GM was in a home and we all suspected she ill treated but we lived 250 miles away and could only visit every 6 weeks or so. My father went into a home close to where I live and I made a point of popping in every day, at different times of day, to keep the staff on their toes. Even so, I arrived once to hear a nurse shouting at him and immediately raised a complaint.
Unfortunately thee is no clear answer to this issue except to say , in our area, you would pay a minimum of £1500 a week.

I'd exercise caution.

This won't be a preventative complaint. It won't help anything in future, it's a score-settling exercise - oh, wholly justified, don't get me wrong - but you have to weigh it up.
I sympathise, one time I came in and they'd put glasses on Mum. Not her actual ones though, but glasses I'd bought to try on, from the shop. They had the price sticker slapped right across one lens but no matter, there she was sat with them on, sticker obscuring her view. It wears you down, okay, it's not like she would have walked anywhere but it's the stupidity.

If you do send an email keep it concise and bright and cheery, just noting what happened. Don't expect any apology or preventative measures to be put in place, they won't give a stuff if my Mum's Surrey care homes are anything to go by. Contact the Council? They might do something if they a) Hate the care home b) See it as a pleasantly trivial complaint they can be seen to be doing something about. The first is unlikely because in my experience the Council cover up for care homes, they are in cahoots and you are the enemy.

Or just ignore it and start looking for another care home on the quiet. Last thing you want in that instance is to start raising complaints because it's possible the Council and the home can conspire to stop your parent's departure - as Surrey did to us, albeit they had me down as a whistleblower after I took one care home to the local press.
Some homes do this thing of 'You've got something on us? We'll get something on YOU' so if you raise Safeguarding concerns, they try and get dirt on you as a tit for tat thing. In that instance, you don't want a list of objections on a secret file putting you down.
Helps if you've got LPA in Health and Welfare, of course.

I am afraid this is pretty normal. Care homes are desperately short staffed. I have personal experience of 5 care homes with my parents and PIL over a period of 15 years. I hear the same things from friends who have elderly relatives in care homes. If you are self funding a pretty basic home costs around £900 per week, yet still, the glasses, the teeth, the hearing aids, the clothes, the shoes get lost/broken over and over again. I got sick of replacing and sewing name tags on clothes. Buying new shoes and slippers. Replacing the glasses and hearing aids. It just adds to the worry and the guilt of not being able to do all the caring alone.

But this is what I don’t get - of course they know he wears glasses for everything. As does he.

It’s the glasses thing as well as the fact that no one told me.

As far as they knew his glasses were either lost or broken. Even if they were to book the optician to come in, they would have had to tell me as I would have needed to pay for it.

And it’s the communication thing. This is the fourth member of staff who had told me how terrible the communication is and that things get missed.

I visited my dad one day and he hadn’t had a shave for a week. He was quite upset. I called the manager the next day to find out what happens. She then told me that someone had tried to called me to tell me that he had run out of razors. He has an electric razor. They said it was broken. it wasn’t, I went into check and it was working fine. And even if it wasn’t - for 1,300 a week they couldn’t have found a bic razor?

And no one called me. No messages, no missed calls. But they insisted they did and refused to look at their call logs. Again, when I mentioned it to staff I was told about poor communication.

I find them so dismissive and they always cover their backs.

This is awful and there's nothing unusual about it.

Chances are, they know they can get away running it like this because they are in cahoots with the so-called local authority Safeguarding teams and they will side with them against YOU.

Why, you sound angry - and intimidating. Posted about the care home on social media. We will not have our staff feeling threatened. This is the line they can take.
You could put your phone number on your Dad's noticeboard in his room or something - though getting calls might make for that 'Oh my God, is that the dreaded call with bad news?' type thing.
A special email address might work better. If they don't use it - I mean the staff and the lower ranking ones may not be allowed to - well they don't care anyway do they.
Can't see management acting on your grievances, unless to make moves against you. Avoid raising this verbally - you have no paper trail to prove what you said or that they ignored it. But keep emails to them pleasant.

This was supposed to be the good home.

He was abused in the first one he went to. He was put in there for respite after a hospital stay (his dementia went from 0 and doing his next door neighbour's accounts and tax to being unsafe on his own in 6 months, it was shocking). It was horrendous.

I chose this place and they assured me he’d be looked after. I tried to look after him myself but in the 6 weeks be lived with us he almost killed us. Me and dh had to stay up 24 hours a day between us as he almost set fire to the house twice in the night and I turned my back for two mins and he was trying to feed my baby lithium batteries from his hearing aid thinking they were sweets. He kept trying to get out the front door and walk on to the busy main road. It was unsafe for all of us.

I hate this.

And we couldn’t move him. All anywhere wanted to know if did he have two years self funding. He’s got about 6 months money left.

I don't know, wasn't aware they ask how much money he has left. I mean, if that's the case it sounds like they're running down the clock.
Who told you this was a good home? You never know til you find out.
It's not Surrey is it!?!
We were paying around £1.3K a week some five years ago for Mum's care, but that is no bearing on what you get back.
I'm really sorry about what happened in the first care home. It's awful.

I would caution you to have all your paperwork spotless if you have power of attorney for him BEFORE you complain.

MIL was treated badly in her care home. We raised a complaint and they immediately contacted social services and said we'd abused her, mentally emotionally and financially. They'd been keeping her pocket money from her - they demanded it in cash she could hold and see, but oddly she never had any. They said we'd never paid it.

It was to stop us moving her to another care home. They had a lot of vacancies and couldn't afford to lose her. It worked.

I'd advise moving him, then think about complaining retrospectively.

No we’re west midlands.

It’s the one with all the 5 star reviews on the care sites. But I am wondering if they only submit the good reviews.

Oh yeah, I looked around several homes. First thing they all wanted to know was how much money he had, even before they asked his name.

I was desperate to get him out of where he was.

The amount of back covering that went on. He was covered in bruised and lost 3 stone in 6 weeks - we couldn’t see him as there were covid outbreaks. They said he was violent and hit staff when they tried to feed him. He didn’t display that before or after.

The social worker who assesed his capacity said he had tried to assault her by “running” at her. She had to retract it and said she was “confused after a covid infection” when it was pointed out that he can’t stand or walk without help.

I’m sick of it all being so hard and people being such arseholes.

All they care about is money, not the people.

Just could be you're on their list because a) You exposed abuse in care homes on their watch and b) Well, that's it - you think they'd be extra nice to you because of that but under State protocol of victim-blaming it tends to work out otherwise. I don't know this, mind, but the idea the Council will help you out after they've wronged you - never happened like that in my experience.

Social workers do lie in my experience, they can do what they please. I mean, you could report it to their regulatory body but they tend to be corrupt.

The social worker assessed him while he was at the first home - she was in on it with them to cover up that they had left him to fall as they wouldn’t provide a stick or frame and didn’t feed him as they let him sleep all day as he got weaker from not eating.

They said they didn’t give him a stick as he was violent with it but tripped themselves up as they said he hit with a stick he didn’t have. So she chimes in with the bullshit about him running at her “like an animal” in her words. He’s 87 and can’t stand up from a chair without help, he’s not standing up and running at anyone.

He’s in a different local authority in this home, different county.

I want to make them aware that he shouldn’t be waking without glasses.

And that I am annoyed that the carers saw this and did nothing about it.

*walking

Hi all this is the OP

More things happened.

I was in the midst of a formal complaint about one thing, then something else happened.

You were right, social services colluded with the care home. They have both been terrible.

I had to become bloody Columbo to work out all the lies.

CQC are looking into it but they have not been great either.

And yes guess what - I had a call today saying that there was “concern” that my fathers bank account was being misused.

So I said, ”absolutely no problem - I have all receipts for all money spent from his account for the last 18 months since he’s been in a residential home and we have had POA. They are all in a diary, all with notes on what was spent and why, I have all the corresponding bank statements. Would you like me to bring them to your offices so we can go through them all? I can be there in 15 minutes.”

The line went quiet and then she said, “oh, there seems to be some confusion. No there is no need for that. I’ve got my wires crossed, all is fine”.

I am sick to fuck of social care.

Complaining has got me no where apart from the old line of Lessons will be learned

I’m looking for a new home for him.

And these were two BIG mistakes that happened.

The homes reported themselves to safeguarding BEFORE they had investigated. It was all shut down and only opened and looked into once I had reported myself when I had all the facts, which I had to dig for as it had been covered up. Same with the CQC.

How do they get away with that?