Any Experience of LA Rapid Response

[MentholLoad]

I organised emergency care for my parents...mum end stage dementia, dad main carer but sick with covid. they agreed to go at a given time to help with sundowning/bedtime and turned up an hour late. by which time dad and sorted her out because she needs to go to bed/can't wait indefinitely and he couldn't stay awake himself any longer. now refusing any help, because it's not helpful/too much hassle.

what's the point??

As long as your Dad is there doing that it won't be great. Can he come and stay with you? It may be she needs to go to a care home even temporarily. Carer breakdown is the phrase to use.

Rapid response type arrangements are basically a crisis service and although they will try their best to get there for a particular time the nature of the service means that they aren't just waiting round the corner to knock in the door at the exact time, and may be delayed if they have a particularly busy shift.

sorry to hear things are tough, once you've got through this blip it's probably a good idea to sit down with your dad and someone from the local authority and officially put together some kind of contingency plan for this sort of situation in the future so you don't have to rely on the scatter gun availability of care from the rapid response team.

we have no room. I mean, I could make room but who would look after mum, if he came here? I'm so fed up. it has taken years to persuade him to accept any help and his illness seemed like a good opportunity. how can social services think it's acceptable to be over an hour late with no contact to explain,at bedtime??

@hatgirl they arranged the time to visit, earlier in the day. so, not expecting them to 'be waiting round the corner' 😡. anyone with any experience of dementia knows bedtime is a flash point. and anyone with any understanding wouldn't be an hour late without any contact. he thought they just weren't coming

Because it's emergency care. They will have had to have taken whatever slot was available and even if that was the right slot your dad asked for it only takes the client before him to have had a fall or be more complex than expected or something and the carer is delayed. It's the nature of crisis care unfortunately!

A properly planned care package arranged not in a crisis situation would be more likely to succeed. Proper contact with the agency would be established, a proper care plan would be in place and the care and specific times would be put out to tender to a wide variety of care agencies who can do the requested times rather tha rapid response having to fit them in to a carers round that is 'close enough' to what they asked for.

also, you don't just 'sit down with someone from social services' and come up with 'sime kind of contingency plan'. you have a needs assessment which establishes a care plan. this doesn't include emergency unexpected care needs

A care plan should absolutely include a contingency plan for what happens if there is emergency unexpected care needs.

in my local authority it wouldn't get signed off by managers unless it did.

I've spent a lot of my working days sitting down with families and working these things out over the years.

if there was a plan for emergency care, surely it would come from rapid response. because the non emergency carers aren't on call. so what's the difference? they would still be subject to other emergencies and delays. and I know there is a woman sat staffing phones, who could have phoned to explain delay. because she phone me at 9pm to tell me, they had refused care

the system is monumentally shit and inhuman. had recent experience of LA 'care' for homeless teenager. equally broken and useless