I wish a journalist would write about this

[PermanentTemporary]

Lads and lasses, if you can tear yourself away from AIBU, how about pitching a proper feature about what happens when the partners of elderly people who become their carers, then become cognitively impaired?

How do families and GPs handle this - or not? Are there GPs and social service depts that will take action to protect the person who was being cared for, and the carer who is no longer able to remember how to do the job of caring?

Because it's happening more and more and it's frightening if you're the family left without information or support.

I work for social services and this is common and we do take action to support. What makes you think we don't?

Obviously we have to know about it - GP, family member, whoever, has to refer it the cared for person refers themselves.

Because I'm on this board reading about adult children hitting a brick wall with frail parents who are visibly being affected by their carers' reduced abilities, but nobody in the system taking in that the carer is losing mental capacity (leaving aside physical ability). That's why.

In my own experience the local Social Services team couldn't have cared less. They knew very well what was going on in my parents house and could see what was happening to the 80 year old carer, but they did nothing.

I was begging for help and I didn't receive any. I cannot put into words what I think of those people.

@PermanentTemporary I guess until people have first hand experience of a DGP or DP being failed, it's an easy subject to miss.
Not just elderly care but other sorts of care, too.
Personally, I think if there was more noise made about getting POA done when people reach 60, or even 50 that would start the conversation.
Future proofing is also such a big consideration that so may people just bypass.
Maybe when people 'buy a pension', the POA and future proofing education could begin?

Agree with the two posters above. It's of little interest until a person is in the situation is having to care. What I've learned after 3 years of this is, that nobody gives a shit about the carer, which is my 83yr old mum.

My friend is currently struggling with her parents. SS, GP etc, no one seems ti give a shit.

The truth is very few people in a position to provide support and guidance give a shit.

The ones that do are burning themselves out trying to do best by the people they come across.

Mercifully for my parents, the district nursing team had to attend my dad after one of his stays in hospital. The head of the team attended and realised that my mother just couldn't take much more as a disabled person caring for someone with MND and assigned them nursing hours.

Literally everyone else in the system washed their hands every time we approached for help.

Frankly when I reach a certain age I'll be shuffling myself off rather than deal with the indignity of being old and in need of care...because no one cares apart from family and they break themselves trying to manage.

I don't work in social services but I know there are many many caring staff but they are battling a broken system. No funding or resources. Please don't say they don't give a shit. The government clearly don't give a shit! The many people who work in social care mostly do.

I frankly think that all carers get a shit deal almost without exception.

I'm specifically interested in this thread though in carers who develop dementia or another illness affecting their cognition. So they can no longer remember or process what they need to do to be a carer.

A big problem is getting a diagnosis is difficult so carers dementia often goes unnoticed

My evidence is eight years old so less relevant now. However, absolutely the Social Work team of DParents' Council identified my DF inadvertently failing to care for DM and his own faculty starting to faulter. Indeed, not only his faculty but he physically couldn't get dressed or be agile as he had been previously. They drew up care plans for both instead of one and pointed me in the direction of securing max attendance allowance for both. Then the SW team re-organised care packages to support both. They did this all without much input from the GP as DParents had the misfortune of being unable to choose their practice because of shortage and had been allotted the least helpful practice.
I can honestly say my DM probably would have died within six months had the SW not swooped in and identified that DF could no longer care as before. (DF was unable to recognise that DM was not eating. When she refused food, he was no longer able to insist that she take 'just a little'.

However, after nearly eight years on this board, I recognise that this experience is few and far between. Absolutely it would not happen there in their Council area now. Indeed, that whole SW team that represented DParents so consistently and kindly across the past decade left the Council one by one before the pandemic.

I absolutely do care.

However I work on a team of what should be 24 people based on the demographics of the area we cover.

Team a manger and seniors have no case load. That's 21 people left.

We have five unfilled full-time vacancies.
Three people seconded elsewhere and not backfilled.
Three long term sick.

That leaves ten of us covering all of it.

My case load is over double what it should be and I physically and mentally cannot take on more cases. I cry every day from the stress. Right now I'm feeling sick about logging on at 8.30.

I'd go off sick but that would shaft the rest of the team even more.

I care, but people above me don't seem to.

@coffeecookie I'm sorry. I work in a team that's currently a third vacant (NHS not SS). This is a massive improvement from last year when we were two thirds down. I was suicidal for chunks of that year. It was horrible. Really feeling for you.

I'm really happy to hear about @Mum5net experience and from the threads I've read it was often an NHS service being the link that wasn't slotting into place in this situation, not SS - being too focused on the absence of a diagnosis, whereas SS are more focused on what the needs are. I like articles that show how things could work better rather than just slamming bad practice... maybe one day someone will write one.

Not much to add, except that I was shocked that all it took was FIL putting his hand up and saying ‘I’ll do it’ for social services to not investigate any further nor make any assessment of whether he was able to be a carer for MIL. ie. whether he had the skills, knowledge, temperament, ability etc to care for someone who has advanced osteoporosis, Parkinson’s and dementia at home. Long story short, he didn’t and couldn’t. Within a few months she was dehydrated, delerious, had fallen multiple times, hadn’t been taking her medications, and was not clean. She went into hospital, then straight to a nursing home where at least she is clean, safe and gets her meds.

FIL still chunters on about how he was sure he could have cared for her at home rather than her go into the nursing home 🙄. He’s totally deluded about it.

i asked on here how many people were confident in their spouse’s ability to care for them at home, if they developed similar conditions: the answer was very few of us. just because we married someone 50 years previously doesn’t make them capable of being a carer in later life.

Totally disagree.

Social Services in Surrey care a lot about the elderly - that is, those who have significant savings. This is because if they can be put in a home, self-funding residents subsidise the Council-funded residents to the tune of several hundred pounds a week.

Later, they will target the spouse - and the house. Why? Well, they can't touch the house if an elderly husband/wife is still living there. So they will encourage the spouse to downsize to a smaller house. This might be good advice, but it's not why they offer it - it's to free up the capital from the sale of a huge house, which can then be used on nursing fees.

However, once your elderly parent is in a care home, you will never hear or see anything of Surrey social services. Important to them if plausible deniability to evade accountability of failing care homes. If the CQC contact them to let them know, they don't pass the info on to families (nor does the CQC either). In 7 care homes I never saw the contact details for Surrey Safeguarding heads on any care home noticeboard - and that's how they like it!

In response to the comment of their being rushed off their feet, Surrey Social Services initiated a campaign of harassment against me and my family after I took the failings of one care home to the local press after it nearly killed Mum. This campaign continued on and off until Mum's passing three and a half years later. Sly at every stage, they pretended to be our new best friend and even offered to help us move Mum back to the family home. They had no intention of allowing this, it gradually emerged - turns out they make this offer so they can make out you're likely to abscond with your parent from the care home. This allows them to have you barred as a preventative measure, probably also allows them to hack your email and phone under RIPA measures to see if you're taking any legal action or going to the press.

They are cunts.

All still employed by Surrey County Council - and my Epsom MP Chris Grayling knows what they're like after three meetings we had with him over the course of a year - and he's done nothing.

The names of social workers or Safeguarding heads cannot be mentioned in any news story I've had published about Mum and her care, either in the local or national press. That helps make them unaccountable at every stage.

Later, they will target the spouse - and the house. Why? Well, they can't touch the house if an elderly husband/wife is still living there. So they will encourage the spouse to downsize to a smaller house. This might be good advice, but it's not why they offer it - it's to free up the capital from the sale of a huge house, which can then be used on nursing fees
The elderly person functions as a kind of pipeline, a kind of hose pipe that the care home can use to siphon all of that lovely money out of that big house. Take a big breath and suck hard... all that golden money flows into their bank account, nicely nicely, lovely jubbly ...another new sports car for the care home owner

My DM was caring for DF it was OK in the beginning until he started deteriorating, DM begged for help and didn't get it. She spoke to the GP, SW etc and they just didn't listen. DM had a carers breakdown, I called for help and was told we would have a call from SS crisis team within 24 hours, days later we had still had no call. I had to make so much fuss and harass everyone Ss, GP etc to get help. DF got pneumonia and ended up in hospital, his behaviour was appalling in hospital, SS knew, rang me about discharge and I said he can't come home, we can't cope, so same SW called mum and bullied her into having him home.

Over Christmas DF deteriorated and became violent, began shadowing, wandering and verbally aggressive again I begged for help, 3 weeks after we began pleading for help we had a visit from a SW (who was fab) he had to protect me from DF who was lashing out physically and verbally.

We had to leave the house for safety and other male relatives had to stay with DF. We called for help again and were sent MH nurses who DF abused (along with us) after calling for help again and speaking to fab SW he arranged for DF to be sectioned. This was after we had been asking for help for MONTHS.

DF now in a MH unit, is being released to a care home, we had a meeting at the bgin6of February and given the name of the new SW who would be in touch. Its take her 5 weeks to contact us and now cannot understand why I will not drop everything to fill in financial assessment forms, view homes etc because she deems it now urgent as the MH unit wants the space. All she cares about is how much money my DPs have, not my DF who is so frail now that I'm scared a move will kill him (I told her this and she just ignored me).

We are going through so much as a family, I'm watching my DF die slowly and we are having to battle a system that doesn't seem to care about anything but £££