How to get someone into nursing care if they refuse? No capacity

[user12743052]

D parent has dementia and complex medical needs, the family member who's caring for them is unwell and DP needs emergency admission to a nursing home.

DP will refuse, scream, wail etc and also I don't have my own transport or anyone else to help. They have been certified as lacking capacity due to the dementia but have their wits about them enough to know we're telling lies if we say we're going on holiday. How on earth do I get DP to the nursing home? I can't pick them up and bung them into a car seat!

@Misthios yes, the problem is how stretched services are - nurses, social work, GP, my employer and colleagues. There's no slack in the system. No siblings or other family to help (parent fell out with them all).

I had this and so many people telling you to "just take them" when it isn't that easy or thinking it is just a legal question. I think what you are asking is what I asked, "how do you physically do it" and it is all very well saying this that and the other should happen, be firm, tell them what is happening when they won't actually move.

SW said all they could do was send the men in white coats to do it by force which I couldn't do. I even had backing from the police who were getting tired of the phone calls about the little green men in her loft who were keeping her awake, emergency calls from carers who had been locked out, complaints about her running up and down a busy road, a main route into the city where she lived. Still we got no practical help.

In the end we hired a private SW, he found the right home, a fall meant a trip to A&E and SW collected her with a bunch of flowers and said he was taking her for a trip out and a meal before she went home. Her carers had packed her stuff and he took her to the home. She didn't twig immediately but kicked off when the penny dropped. Hats off to the home as she put them through hell for a few weeks, phone calls to the police, setting off fire alarms. Poor young male carers were used to "charm" her and I often wondered if a young woman would be used in the same way with an old man without boundaries but that is a different question. Then she settled.

Good luck, it was one of the hardest things I've ever had to deal with and I've said I will never accept LPA for anyone again as it nearly killed me (I ended up in the cardiac unit at our local hospital.)

The SW will always start with the easiest / cheapest solution eg - get a taxi. So try that despite you thinking it won't work (or at least pretend you have). Then phone back the crisis team and say the taxi plan hasn't worked what do you suggest next? The likelihood is both police and ambulance will end up attending the house and she will be put on a temporary section whilst the ambulance crew transport her to the nursing home. You need to keep throwing this back to the crisis team. By all means try what they suggest but when that doesn't work you call them straight away to inform them and ask for more help.

Good luck, it was one of the hardest things I've ever had to deal with and I've said I will never accept LPA for anyone again as it nearly killed me (I ended up in the cardiac unit at our local hospital.)

This also happened to both my SILs.

My DM (pretty bad Alz. by then) would never in a million years have agreed to move to a care home - why, when according to her there was nothing wrong with her? - but it had become an urgent necessity - she was no longer safe to be left alone at all.

Having arranged it all, we took her ‘out for lunch’ - a 60 mile journey and I was petrified the whole time that she’d twig. The CH had asked us to arrive for lunchtime - the actual lunch was very nice, poor DM still didn’t twig when you’d have thought it’d be obvious that it was a CH dining room. She even offered to pay for us all! 😩. Not that she’d had any valid CCs for quite a while.

I took her with Dsis, Dbro and BiL followed a bit later with her things (surreptitiously packed the night before) and a couple of small pieces of furniture.

She was self funded and we’d never involved SS - didn’t need anyone else to tell us what her needs were - they were obvious enough! - except that the home we’d chosen sent a SW for an informal interview to ascertain that she did actually need residential care.

I was dreading the day of the move like nothing else in my life before, but it went better than we’d dared to hope.

I can’t say she was happy or that she settled very quickly, but by then there was no alternative.

I have to confess until this happened I had no idea how damaging stress could be. I was admitted as an emergency, they wouldn't even take my from A&E to the ward without first fitting me with a mobile defibrillator as my ECG was so bad. Had an angiogram and other tests, once I was away from the phone and stopped getting calls from SW, GP, police, her neighbours it all just settled to completely normal.

I couldn't face doing that to her, it would have ended in violence. She visited one care home to see what it was like and punched the manager in the face and ran off down the road. If you had seen how frail she was you wouldn't believe it was possible. Fortunately the manager was very good about it and said he'd never seen someone with advanced dementia in their mid 80s who could give Usain Bolt a run for his money.

How have you got on? It is such a difficult situation.

I don't suppose my mum's situation is replicable but thought it might raise a smile. Mum was sectioned with dementia/delirium/acute what-have-you and was being very aggressive and uncooperative until the driver of the private ambulance came in to help. He was GORGEOUS, the living spit of Thor! He just held out his hand and mum went straight with him giggling like a schoolgirl.

Maybe you could hire a hottie to lure her into a car?

Sorry but this made me chuckle and would 100% have worked with my aunt. Gutted I didn't think of it!

Perhaps this could be a lucrative daytime sideline for the Chippendales?

I wish it were that easy. No luck so far.

I know I should laugh but i'm so exhausted with all this chasing around trying to placate people going on at me because I'm not a miracle worker. If it's not the carer telling me I'm a useless lazy cow it's social work telling me I need to get DParent moved yesterday or DP moaning at me for not visiting enough when I've worked a 70 hour week. Fuck this.

I'm sorry it's such a nightmare for you. It sounds so hard.