Does anyone recognise this situation?

[Knickersnolongerinatwist]

Surely my mum can't be in a category of one?
Diagnosis of vascular dementia.
Aged 87. Physical health pretty reasonable. Conversational ability still great. Can read and do crosswords.
BUT can't figure out time. Doesn't get the difference between day and night and something in 5 minutes time or 5 hours time. She also often doesn't know where she is (even when in own home).
She can't cope at home. We've tried residential (that's what she was assessed as needing and we thought it was the right call in terms of company and chatting to other residents) but she's often up at night and staff say they can't meet her needs, especially when she tries to get home and sw has said she needs dementia care. No space in dementia unit of current care home.
I've started looking at other homes with availability. They are depressing. Residents sat in lounge with no conversation between them. Sometimes staring at a telly.
What should we be looking for in terms of care? We need a balance of well staffed at night to cope with night waking and also other residents who can be a good conversation partner.
Has anyone ever found this holy grail?
Self funding and money no object (for now at least!)
I feel so hopelessly ill-equipped for this search, especially as we got it so wrong with the first attempt.

Hi, my DM sounds v similar to yours. She is in a care home that has different floors for different needs, so she started in residential and moved to dementia as it progressed recently and she was wandering.

It's good because all activities are done as a group, so residential with dementia with nursing care and she can eat in a few places so not just on the dementia wing. Even though it's a lovely home I do find the dementia floor depressing I hate to say and sometimes DM gets confused by the people who have more advanced symptoms.

So what I'd say is you need some kind of mixed setting... Maybe start at carehome.co.uk for services and reviews or post on local FB pages for recommendations.

You need a specialist dementia unit for her. I used to work in a really lovely well run nursing home where the bulk of residents were bed bound/infirm following medical events or just generally too frail to live alone. The dementia patients were much more challenging especially when they were all sundowning and then disturbing others. And truthfully, they can end up being a real nuisance to those residents (and their relatives) who don't want people walking into their rooms for a chat.

You won't get moved on from a specialist unit but you do run that risk again with a mixed one when your Mum declines further. I'm not sure there is a holy grail OP, my Dad was in a nursing home for the last weeks of life (cancer) and they were totally unable to meet his needs. It wasn't a nice experience at all.

@Knickersnolongerinatwist I wonder if the CQC commission site could point you in the right direction.

You can search for residential homes with specialist care throughout each are of the country. The CQC inspects and rates each home so it will give you a better idea of suitability for your Mum

I'm posting this link purely as an example of how you could approach your quest. (I based it on a search within a 20 mile radius of London)

Wishing you and your Mum well💐

It’s an absolute minefield. My recommendation is don’t look at the aesthetics of the place - look at what level of care they offer.
When it was time for my mum to go in a home I went for the dementia wing of a place that on paper looked like a 5* hotel (Barchester if your interested). It was the biggest biggest mistake for a number of reasons - and they were very quick to get rid of her. She ended up in a very small place with the most fabulous care, and yeah you know the wallpaper was peeling in places but the staff ratio was very high. When she went in she was in a wheel chair and 6 stone. Within 3 months she was walking unaided to the garden centre for lunch and lucid and happy.

also adding this site @Knickersnolongerinatwist as it details the experiences of care homes, from the relatives perspective

eta; just noticed @Duvetstay has already suggested that site

My DM with vascular dementia deteriorated very quickly from being the perfect hostess at home (so long as all she had to do was sit and make conversation) to being completely unaware of her surroundings within weeks. It is awful to say it but she was unable to walk so wandering and being awake at night was not an issue.

DM herself was unable to join in conversations and talk but there were other residents who were very chatty and were there simply because they could no longer care for themselves or were a serious falls risk and I was always reassured that if somehow she broke through the fog of dementia there were some lovely ladies she could chat to, along with the staff of course.

Like others have said, the building was in need of a refurb but the staff were second to none.

She’s probably relatively unusual.

A solution to that may be a setting that covers a wider range of needs. Top up activities can be another good option if money isn’t a major constraint. Eg a 1:1 carer to take her on an outing a couple of times a week.

Thank you all for taking the time to comment and share your experiences/that useful website. Very grateful to you all. What a horrible journey this is.

@Knickersnolongerinatwist total sympathy with you at this horrible time. One piece of advice I was given was find somewhere that will be able to meet the needs of the person long term. That way you will not need to move them. I also agree that the care is more important than the aesthetic. My father was deemed to be at the end of his life when I found a nursing facility for him. Two years on he is alive, well cared for and most importantly calm and settled. The facility is not fancy but it is cosy and the staff are local and plentiful. Sometimes I visit and it feels like there are more staff than residents.

There is no easy route on this. The care is what trumps everything else. I am in awe of the staff.

I don’t think you’ve got it wrong, the home has. We had a similar experience of a home assessing my mum, saying they could meet her needs and the placement rapidly breaking down, literally within 48 hours. Tbh that patch was the worst time of all our lives, most of all Mum’s of course.

I think you will be able to find somewhere that will be unfazed by someone with islands of cognitive ability and a huge sundowning/night wandering pattern, but it might take some time. Mum was moved to a specialist brain injury centre following an assessment from the Older Adults Mental Health Team, but that was after she had become actually violent due to her terror in that hellhole.