If you care for your parent, what do you on a daily basis?

[FaultybutFabulous]

I am the sole carer for my lovely mum but it's tiring and not helped by the fact I don't drive. Walking there and back takes an hour if I go from home. If I go after taking ds to school it's 50 minutes walk there and all uphill! I was wondering what other daughters/sons do in their caring roles? I cook, clean shop, sort prescriptions, appointments, all the admin side of things, banking, gardening, and lots of emotional support. Mum has a physical disability and a few other medical conditions that I help her to manage but she is cognitively fine and mainly frustrated she needs help with anything yet at the same time leans on me a lot.

Anyone?

How old is she and how ok with online stuff/talking on the phone? A lot of that could be dealt with online/over the phone.
Prescriptions
Shopping
Making appointments?
Has she applied for attendance allowance and she could then pay for a cleaner/gardener?

I can talk to you about it from the other side, if that might help a bit? As in, I'm the one in need of physical care.

I do most of those for my mum too, although we live five minutes away from each other and I drive. I work five days a week too. 99% of her admin/ banking I do online so that saves loads of time. I pay a cleaner to go to hers once a week which helps massively and a gardener once in a while, could you afford to do that? I do her food shopping with mine and usually cook a few meals at the weekend that will last her the week. I also talk a lot to my friends, sometimes just having a little moan makes me feel better and then I get on with it. Do you have much emotional support? It’s very hard but they deserve it if they’ve always looked after us.

I don't care for my elderly parent, but I do care for my 73 year old DH. He had a stroke 18 months ago and has been left with severe cognitive problems, some physical problems and increasing aphasia (problems with speech). He is blind in one eye and sight impaired in the other. He can be doubly incontinent so I need bed protectors, Tena Men underwear at all times, and a damn good washing machine!

He cannot tell if he needs his bum wiping so I always go to the loo with him and check. If he's had a poo I wipe him and sometimes he needs a wash/shower. He needs help getting his clothes back on. I changed the bathroom flooring so that it can be quickly and easily cleaned if necessary.

He can't use a knife so I cut his food up and give him a spoon and fork. He drops food everywhere and doesn't notice. Not his fault so I just do a lot of clean ups.

He has seizures if he gets stressed (on medication) but he gets stressed a lot, especially if I leave him. So I don't. All shopping is done online, and my weekly outing is an hour up at my sister's flat (she lives up the road). Other than that I never leave him. He doesn't sleep through the night and wakes frightened and needs calming.

It's tough. And it'll get worse - his speech is deteriorating and he gets very frustrated by that. I'm hoping he doesn't start to get angry (not unusual) as that would be difficult to deal with.

Thank you for the replies.
She's 83 and does get attendance allowance. Do any of you get paid for what you do? I'm usually there about 3 hours a day then do shopping, online stuff at home along with lots of phone calls for emotional support and company. I often get told "Well you are supposed to be my carer" and that annoys me because I do so much and feel like she doesn't realise I need time to do my own things at home. My summer holiday wasn't much of a holiday and I feel resentful of that as I have a sibling who drives who lives a few miles away who does nothing.

I get Carer's Allowance (it's means tested and I qualify because I had to take early retirement to look after DH). He gets Attendance Allowance. He lacks capacity so I look after all the money. Luckily all our accounts are joint so I have access.

What does she spend the attendance allowance on?

Gardener, physiotherapy, transport because she can't drive now, anything fir around the house that makes life easier for her.

Ready meals for bad days when I can't go and cook her dinner. Sometimes I prepare her lunch the night before.

Do you get any time off as it were? How do you balance your life? Most days for me are: get up, get dc ready for school, walk to school, walk home calling at the shops on the way, walk to mum's, spend 3 hours there, walk home, quick lunch, walk to school, walk back, cook dinner, tidy up, sort laundry for next day, homework, showers, bed for youngest, collapse into bed myself.

What does she mean "you're supposed to be my carer"?

Is the other sibling totally estranged from you both?

My mum is 91 and pretty much housebound (she can't go out alone) and has paid carers for an hour twice a week to give her a shower. She refuses to have more than this and can and does shower herself but can't do her hair on her own. Her food shopping is online (my brother helps her with this) and she gets frozen ready meals delivered by one of those food delivery companies. There isn't much life admin to handle but she does it, with occasional help from me or my brother. If her toaster broke, for instance, we'd get her a new delivered by Amazon.

She spends her attendance allowance on a fortnightly cleaner and some gardening in the summer.

She speaks to me, my brother, my cousin on the phone about weekly, occasionally more often (I rang her this week when the Queen died as I knew she'd be upset) and has a neighbour and local friend who look in on her.

Your mother sounds WAY TOO DEPENDENT on you. Why on earth are you there for 3 hours every day? If she has extreme physical needs she should be having nursing care at home surely. If you lived hours away she'd have no choice.

I'm there so much because to get the carers element of UC and for her to get attendance allowance she has to need 35 hours of care a week. That's 5 hours a day so I'm there 3 hours or there abouts, 1 hour travelling to and fro and another hour for shopping and phone support etc.

And I'm named on her attendance api action as her carer.

I have 3 siblings. 2 of them live hours away. One of them is a few miles but can't be bothered too busy to help so it all falls to me. I'm happy to do it but I need a break sometimes.

Oh well ask the nearby sibling to give you a break occasionally then.

Is it worth whatever UC top-up you get to spend 35 hours a week caring? That's a full time job.

Maybe there's an age element to attendance allowance but my Mum's doesn't seem to be means tested at all.

She won't help. If I ever ask then I get told she can't.

You don't have to be there for her to get attendance allowance, the small print says that is paid for their need whether they actually use it to pay for care or not (I work with a lot of elderly patients who get it but refuse to use it for the purpose intended, ie carers to relieve their poor children of some of the burden of looking after them, some elderly people get rather selfish/self centered and expect too much, usually from daughters🙄).
I don't know anything about UC but I did get carers allowance at one point which if I remember rightly was the grand total of £235 per month, I certainly did not tot up the hours I was there with her and nobody is going to check up on you!! Everybody is entitled to some time off in a week, I think you are doing too much. If she can physically manage with ready meals ect then you need to take some days off........ Personally if you can I would go to work and get her assessed from social services fir carers, you are entitled to a life of your own!! 💐

@FaultybutFabulous my mother had attendance allowance for years without ever using it for 'care'. She stashed it away in savings whilst I tried to fit in taking her shopping ect with three kids and fulltime work. She actually drove me back to work after I took early retirement with her excessive demands for attention! That remark 'your supposed to be my carer' would have finished it for me, who else puts in that level of work for less than £2 per hour.......... It's a disgrace how carers are treated and usually women.

Does it matter what others do? You're doing too much. It's demanding all of your time. You don't want to continue. Even if the whole world was doing five times more so what?
You can decide what you're happy to do, and proceed with that

Yes it matters because if I don't do things then nobody will.

Can she use the internet at all or is that a non-starter? Ring up for her prescriptions? Accept a delivery at the door?

What can she do? What does she do?

Everything that Mossstitch said! 👍

‘you’re supposed to be my carer’ ??? Is that the sum of your life on this earth ? Will you say this to your children? Is that what you brought them into the world for?

You have only one life and that life is important, your life has value and keep repeating that .

Find a balance that helps your mum but where you are ‘you’ and not devoting your life to someone else , family or not . No amount of money is worth unhappiness. Get a part time job. Can your mum not get some care from the NHS?

Ring adult social services and ask for an assessment for carers to go in and do it.

I agree with getting a Care Assessment under the Act. I have had to have this for myself, and we can all help you prepare for it and do it.

I will not have my adult DC give up their lives for my care. We:

1 Buy it in as far as possible;
2 Make sure I have the tech to do as much for myself as possible (phone, laptop);
3 Ask as little of them as possible - them sorting out some meals and housework for me is brilliant when I'm not doing so well;
4 Draw on the available resources (via the NHS and Local Authority) as much as possible, e.g. the GP practice's social prescribers, adult social care services community physio;
5 Claim PIP / Attendance Allowance and all related benefits

However I appreciate that your mum is older than me. But nevertheless you cannot give up your life like this when you have a young child. When I was younger and active I gave up a lot for my father but declined to do it full-time as I had young DC. We settled on one full day a week from me.

This is the message you need to keep hammering home to everyone who will listen.

Everyone is happy for you to shoulder the burden but what if something happens to you? You might get Covid, or break your leg and you simply won't be able to help, and there needs to be some sort of back up system in place to take over.

In any case, you need respite from having to do this every day, it's just not sustainable. Can you get someone to come in twice a week?

Is there a carers group near you? It might be worth joining for support and advice. Adult social care should be able to help although they are very overstretched everywhere. I've also heard that the Red Cross is quite helpful, look on their website.