I am involved in my elderly father's care. He has dementia with challenging behaviours. He lives in a remote village over 100 miles from me. I don't have a car. I have a job, am doing a phD and have children. I haven't lived with or near my father for 40 years and until recently only saw him a few times a year. He moved away when my parent's divorced and he is a difficult person. That's not just my opinion. My sister has no contact with him and he has more or less never had friends as far as I can tell, because of his personality.
Over the last few months I have devoted a great deal of time trying to organise care and medical attention for him, looking after his house and garden, building good relationships with neighbours and other people he needs like his GP, shop keepers etc. For a few weeks I moved in with him which had a big impact on my family.
He now has carers coming in three times a day. I speak to him every day and make sure everything in his home is working. I also field calls (several a day) and write emails almost daily to the various people involved in his life. I visit every weekend (Which costs £120 and takes 1o hours return journey)The home care is not working out well because he wanders out of the house, starts fires in the house, makes sexual comments to the carers etc. etc. This is all taking up a lot of my time. The biggest source of stress for me is that his social worker, doctor, nurse etc are all determined to keep him at home and not to allow him residential care. Of course, this only works if I can be heavily involved.
I am utterly stressed out and I don't think it's a safe situation for my father either. Does anybody have experience of what happens if a relative just says ' I can't keep on doing this?'