Persuade parent to get someone to help with personal care!

[BWatchWatcher]

Hi folks,
Looking for advice.
My mother is in her 70s and not very mobile. Due to an illness she is also quite heavy. Illness also makes her prone to fungal infections.
When she’s at home my dad helps with her care but he is in his 70s too and arthritic (and frankly hates it).
They are comfortably well off but my mother claims she is fine without outside help, largely because it restricts her freedom. She would have to be up at a certain time each day.
She needs help. This is silly. How do I convince her to wise up?
Thanks!

I don’t think the problem is persuading your DM, it’s persuading your DF to stop helping her if it’s too much for him.

1. It is difficult to find a carer who will come in at the time you want, so essentially you need to negotiate a time that suits you as best as can be.

1. However this sounds like your parents are putting up hurdles before they need to. If you can find a good carer perhaps start slowly and leave it to the carer to pursuade. So if a friend has a good carer could she pop in one morning a week for a couple of hours and do some of the more difficult tasks. (Or an agency will know who their better, more persuasive carers are and bemotivated for a new client.) Tasks could include a proper shower including some medicated shower gel, changing bedsheets, sorting out your mums laundry etc. And once they have got used to the idea of a carer coming in, and indeed may enjoy the company, it should get easier from then. (One weekly task I arranged early on was to have my mum taken out for a couple of hours. Even feeding ducks in the park with the carer's grandchildren was a change of scenery, and helped lift her mood.).

We are now over six years into having carers coming in, and it is all about finding the right one. The first was brilliant, as I think the agency was trying harder but after that it was not so good, and my mums care needs rose, so that I ended up employing her favourite carer directly. Because she is good at getting people to do things I have noticed that the sheltered housing seem to ask her to do the odd favour, like shave someone when they have stopped being able to do it themselves, the odd bit of shopping, or cover when someone's daughter is on holiday. What assume they are doing is use the fact that an experienced, qualified, carer is coming in and getting her to introduce the concept of support/care. None of these additional tasks seem to last long, so I assume that once care is introduced more formal arrangements are made.

Frighten her with all the stories about bloody awful care homes. Shouldn't be hard - they're all true.

Tell her how it will cost £1,000 a week - a week - minimum. And how you don't get anything you ask for, that once they're in, that's it.

How clothing goes missing, and valuable items, and it's regarded as just one of those things by the care home manager.

How they get roused to be washed and changed at 6.30am in the care home every morning anyway, if they can't do it themselves.

The overall lack of control.

Or how long-standing couples get separated by penny-pinching local Councils who always side with the care home against the family.

How once certain residents get past a point, a programme of covert dehydration is applied, without the family's consent or knowledge - won't be long then, and it saves the Council and the NHS CCG money.

And how, should the family suspect and raise concerns about low fluid intake, the care home can go to Adult Safeguarding - the Gestapo of adult social care - and have said family barred from the care home - ensuring the covert pathway programme goes ahead unimpeded.

Explain how the care home GP will be in the pay of the care home, and in no mood to bite the hand that feeds. Sinister euphemisms like 'TLC' - Tender Loving Care - will be liberally sprinkled over your parent's medical notes, implying the end is near. Afterwards, you won't be able to prove a damn thing.

Especially how you won't even be allowed to look at your parent's medical notes if they didn't know to grant you Lasting Power of Attorney in Health and Welfare while they were still able to. Terms like 'severe dementia' can be sprinkled all over them, whether true or not - if it's written down, it becomes true, so the thinking goes. Everyone can see those medical notes, other than you. (Incidentally, I suggest you get LPA in Health and Welfare while you still can)

And how most care homes are at the rough end of some very nasty outsourcing - they are only in it for the money, and nothing else.

CF: living in their own home, and knowing they have to get up at a certain time.