Discharge to assess review looming - telling them I can't be a carer for DM anymore

[Frazzled1969]

Sorry, long term lurker here looking for advice!

DM is currently on her 3rd hospital admission this year (COPD, heart failure, exacerbations, infections and breathlessness) and is about to sent to a 'discharge to assess' bed in a care home.

I've reached my end with it all in terms of being her evening/weekend carer but I'm worried that she will tell ASC that she has me and I'll have to say in front of her that I can't do it anymore. I'm literally treading on eggshells around her - I'm that 8 year old girl getting told off by a very old school parent. She's had me in tears recently when I can't do right for doing wrong! I wouldn't be surprised if she tells them that she has also got carers arranged (We've had to cancel them all).

I'd love mum to be in a care home full time but she has no finances to do this, so I have to wait for her to be assessed for either CHC or ASC funding.

Please - any advice?!

walk away , don’t visit and don’t answer the phone for a while , go on holiday ,

if she has you in tears you need to get away and look after yourself

she does it because it works

tell everyone in writing that you can’t do it and won’t try

I think you tell whoever is in charge of assessing her that you can no longer help, in writing, that carers have been cancelled as of x day so someone else will need to organise reinstatement/ replacement.

Then like pp said don’t engage, they will try and talk you round and even lie about what you’ve agreed to take on. Lots of people end up at crisis point and take a step back during a hospital stay. It’s not ideal as leads to bed blocking but if there was more support / respite out ghere for family carers then this wouldn’t happen as often.

The last time DF was in hospital DM said she wanted to move to a care home. I wrote an email to the discharge team to say we would no longer be providing any additional support ( they lived an hour away) and in my opinion it was an unsafe discharge asDF was unable to clean himself, toilet reliably or cook food and that even the maximum number of carers wouldn’t be enough. That seemed to do the trick, or maybe it was because I mentioned they were self funded.

Thank you all

I hadn't thought of putting it in writing.
I just feel like I've dug myself into a hole that I've now got to try and climb out of 🙁

It is like boiling a frog - it’s not bad at first but gets worse and worse - more difficult for you and harder to extract yourself at the same time

but you are doing the right thing no matter how others might try to twist and force things

You have my sympathy. In my experience nobody will listen whatever you say or do. You can write, phone, do f2f and they do what they want. I am an only child, I live over 200 miles from my parents and work full time. I won't bore you with all the details, just say Mum died in December 2023, and Dad in April 2025. It nearly broke me. I consider myself good at communicating and organising but it was the most difficult thing I could imagine.

The threshold for accessing a care home funded by social services is very high. They’ll try everything to keep her at home. If you can no longer help, they’ll put a care package in (if she agrees). Call the hospital social work discharge team before the meeting and explain it’s difficult to talk about it in front of your mum.

Once she is in the care home, either email or ask to talk to the person in charge in private. They will be used to people in your situation and will realise that the can't always rely on people's own perceptions of their care needs.

It’ a tough one. When my late Dad was awaiting discharge, the hospital put a lot of pressure on me to be his carer. I was the only daughter, and lived a two hour drive away - my two brothers, both of whom lived near him, didn’t experience any pressure like this. I told them that if I had to care for my Dad, he’d survive approximately 24 hours before I put a pillow over his head. They were horrified, but did get the message.

As others have said, you need to blunt. My DM was taken very ill
while staying with me. When my she was being considered for discharge the hospital seemed hell bent on discharging her to my care, even though her home was over 200 miles away and I worked full time. She was also nowhere near well enough to make the journey in a family car. Mum and I had a great relationship, but neither of us was happy with what was being suggested. Eventually I had to tell them, very bluntly, that I wouldn’t be picking her up and I wouldn’t be opening the front door if they tried to send her home. Thankfully a solution was found to get her back to her own home, where she lived for many more years.

Thank you all so much. It's so bloody depressing how difficult it is. We've been through trying to get her a funded care home before with no joy, but things are much worse now. Even so I don't have much faith.