LO refusing help- Anything we can do?

[ThatWildMintSloth]

Does anyone know if there is anything we can do please?
Sorry long post...

My great aunt (88yrs old) is currently in hospital again after a "fall." Its the 2nd time within 12 months that police have had to force entry into her home and she is always found on the floor, soaked through, soiled and been laid there for potentially 3 or 4 days. My brother has also had to force entry in another time within that time too.
The situation then goes, hospital for a few weeks and then being discharged back home. There has also been several times where she has "fallen" in the street and been taken home by various passersby. Great aunt refuses that anything is wrong with her, other than she doesnt feel herself and feels confused about alot of things. She is insisting that she isnt falling but simply "deciding to sit down."

She did have carers once when discharged from hospital the last time but it was a fight and she ended up locking them out after day 3 and telling them not to come back as she doesnt need anybody. We live in a different city to her (an hour drive) and she refuses to move.

We're obviously all very worried about her and feel its unsafe for her to be in her home by herself. Is there anything we can do?

Does she actually have sufficient marbles to be making her own choices, even if they aren't the choices you would make? Adults who have sufficient mental capacity are allowed to make their own choices, even if they are bad choices or may result in a shorter life. No one gets to be immortal.

If she has capacity then you respect her decision. At the age of 88 she might be secretly hoping that one of these crisis events will eventually lead to her death so as to avoid the long drawn-out decline which will be longer, more tedious and significantly less tolerable if she has more "care".

If you are sure that she doesn't have the capacity to make these kinds of choices you can get social services involved, she will need to be assessed for mental capacity and care needs and if she has assets these will be used to pay for what she needs until the assets are gone. This may be in total contravention to what she would have wanted when she did have all her marbles so be cautious about whether to trigger this.

Does she have any DC of her own @ThatWildMintSloth?

She is home again now and so it continues..
@RareGoalsVerge Thank you for your reply. I'm not sure if that is the case but I guess its something to bare in mind.
Her sister (my grandmother, who is 91) used to live next door to her, up until last year but she has moved near to me now (mostly) due to the decline in behaviour of great aunt.

Sorry I thought I had updated this the other day but for some reason my message sat here in the box not sent. Its now below.

I would say that her mental capacity comes and goes.
For example, currently she is saying she was not found on the floor, she was in her bed and anybody who says different is a liar. (She was definitely on her living room floor and not on her bed and no she doesnt sleep on the floor.)
She is also requesting that we find her other 2 phones because this one is playing up. (She most definitely only has one phone.)
She has also been saying she wishes that her mum was here to make everything better.

Some other things she tells me specifically are that there is a man on the lampost outside her house who is only there at night time and that the houses out the window of one side of her house are in the wrong place and should be out the other side. I've said to her to maybe mention it to her GP and she said she doesnt understand why she feels the way she does but she said no because he'll mention dementia but she knows its not that.

We have spoken to social services (several times) but they say that she would have to request them herself. They also said that we could try and ask her GP if they could send a request.

@BunnyRuddington No she doesnt have any have children of her own. She had always been like a second grandmother to us.

GP should help and refer her to SS

Get her a pendant or wrist alarm

Install a key safe outside the front door

Organise carers to call each evening to check on her

Move her to respite care every few weeks so that she can be checked on regularly

Ask District Nurses to call

When she's next in hospital refuse for her to be discharged home. Get her discharged to an assessment unit/home. Explain that there is no one to care for her at her home

Who has POA ?

We've tried previously with the GP but they always ring her and state that the family have contacted and thats why theyre calling her. This then puts her back up and she refuses to engage with them. We've never specifically asked the GP if they would contact social services though so we will try this.

She refuses to wear a pendant etc

We do have a key but she deadbolts the door from the inside. Everytime it is broken off, she gets an engineer to reinstall.

She has has carers, after the 3rd day, she refused to answer the door to them and stared they leave her alone.

How would we organise district nurses? She doesnt have any medical needs so I doubt we could get this.

We tried that previously but the unit was in a different city to her and so she refused to be taken there. Then was discharged home by ambulance. This time was discharged by ambulance too, she actually rang my mum while in said ambulance, asking for her address to let the "taxi" know. Also saying she wasnt sure how she would pay as somebody mustve stolen her handbag in hospital. The medics in the background were assuring her that she didnt need to pay and of course they didn indeed her address.

Nobody has her POA. She had previously said she wanted my aunty to be POA (both had spoken to solicitor, there were letters etc) but some weeks after, she said she has never said that, why would she and of course she does not agree to it. So it didnt happen.

There really isn't anything you can do, based on your update. Without POA you can't dictate that she can't go home from hospital. Or organise healthcare or respite care. Or organise anything via the GP

She'll do what she does, using the NHS when she doesn't really need to (because she should be in a care/nursing home) and eventually the inevitable will happen

It's so sad and I'm so sorry that you're having to watch this happen

@chatgptsbestmate It is really sad but thank you for being direct. It is what I thought, I just wondered if there was anything we were missing.

Thanks anyway

@ThatWildMintSlothi would ask for advice on this on the Elderly Parents section which I think is under “other stuff”.

You definitely don’t need a POA for instance to talk to the person responsible for discharge on the ward and suggest that it is an “unsafe discharge”. I look after 2 elderly relatives, neither if which have given POA to anyone and I’ve done this with both of them.