When to force the issue re residential care?

[MrsBennetsPoorNerves]

I have responsibilities for an elderly relative and LPoA for finance/health issues. She has no family living nearby but we have been able to manage some things remotely with assistance from paid carers visiting regularly. She has a dementia diagnosis.

She does not recognise herself how vulnerable she is and insists that she doesn't need help. She does need help though, and we're getting to the point where it may no longer be safe for her to live alone. She will not acknowledge this and gets enraged if it is even suggested. She finds the carers irksome as it is, even though she relies heavily on their help.

She is adamant that she wants to stay in her own home but this is increasingly becoming unviable. At what point do we have to force the issue? And when that time comes, how do we actually go about that if she refuses?

I am finding the whole thing very distressi g because I want to respect her views and wishes but she is getting to the point where she is a danger to herself, and it seems that we might have to overrule her preferences because it isn't in her best interests to follow them. Any advice would be welcomed please.

If I had a pound for every person who told me to "just put her in a home" I'd be a wealthy woman. If you can't get a DOLs done, it took us over a year, and they physically won't go what do you do? Social worker told me the next step was the men in white coats coming and her being removed by force and that wasn't something I was prepared to sanction. You said your aunt acquiesced but what if she hadn't? Would you have been prepared to have her removed from her home by force. To clarify when my elderly relative needed to go into care she was visited by a care home manager to assess her and she punched him in the face. She was never going to agree.

My neighbour with vascular dementia, was only sectioned / put in a home, after becoming very violent and smashing the patio doors with a hammer that was in the shed, his wife was lucky it wasn’t her head.
My other neighbour spent £400k and sold his 3 rental properties to keep his wife with dementia in a care home for 8 years. They would likely have disregarded half the value of the properties but I don’t think he even thought about a financial assessment later on and he definitely didn’t know about annuities.
All he has now is is house, worth maybe £200k and his pension.

Have you looked into Immediate Needs Annuities OP?

Would you have been prepared to have her removed from her home by force

Sometimes, that has to happen.
I cared for an elderly lady with Lewy Body Dementia who had not eaten or drunk anything for three days; she had been doubly incontinent and would not let anyone near her to change her clothes/wash her; she growled menacingly when the dementia specialist nurse (Community) came out to see her.
Her GP arranged for her to be admitted to hospital, but it took three paramedics and three police officers to get her into the ambulance, and she assaulted each one of them - they had to strap her down for the journey, she screamed unendingly throughout the journey and (unfortunately) there was a little audience of neighbours gathered on the pavement, watching it all.

Once she was at the hospital, and medicated, she became calmer and (just about) accepted help to get clean again. She started to eat and drink.

She ended up going back home with sedation, and 24 hour nursing care, which her husband willingly paid for. He was looking at care homes, but she died before she needed to be moved to one.

Some dementia patients become very, very violent, no matter what you do.

Another gentleman I knew with dementia refused to stay in his home with his wife - he walked out endlessly and went for very, very long walks, and she never knew where he was, and the police were always having to look for him and bring him home. He did not recognise his wife anymore in any case, and was looking for what he thought was "home". Unfortunately he was remarkably fit, physically.

His wife had all the doors and windows reinforced so that he couldn't get out when she wasn't there, but one day she came home to find him methodically removing all the locks on the French doors, and he threatened her very aggressively with a screwdriver when she tried to stop him.

He was sectioned and ended up in a specialist psychiatric dementia unit.

And yet another man tried to stab one of his carers with a sharp knife from the kitchen of his home, and it took several police officers to get the blade from him.

He had to be sectioned, too.

People do not always realise that there can be a very dangerous, violent side to some people with dementia.

I know they can be violent, I said about my elderly female relative punching a care home manager in the face.

Obviously if someone hasn't eaten or drunk in days it is a medical emergency but generally if it is just that relatives are worried about memory loss or behaviour do you think many people would want to have their relative removed in the way you describe. I think that is a last ditch thing and of course the medical people have to be confident the person doesn't have capacity to make the decision, like they always say you can have capacity to make bad decisions.

Even if you get them to a home, we did it by deception like a previous post, the home is on dodgy ground until they can get a DOLs done and that can take months, over a year in our case.

It isn't easy to get someone sectioned for dementia, the NHS isn't daft, if they section they pay. They much prefer the family to sort it and it is a nightmare quite apart from sorting out finance which I found the easiest bit.