How long typically to settle into a nursing home?

[TeenToTwenties]

My Mum (90) has had to move permanently into a nursing home following a 3 week stay in hospital. Cognitively she is sound when not too tired, but physically very frail.

How long has it taken your cognitively aware relatives to settle?

I worked in elderly care for many years. Some settle within a month, some never settle.

I don’t think people are given enough support to leave their homes and possessions and move into a care setting. It’s a lot.

Was it her decesion to go into care? Does she have her posessions?

My relative never liked it, but also didn't make any effort to get to know anyone or generally interact with it at all positively, no matter how much encouragement she was given. She was very cross that no one would facilitate her moving home. Then she had a fall which made her realise she couldn't be at home any more. So she still didn't like it but did accept it was the least bad option. She only ended up being there for a couple of months - maybe she would have got used to it if she'd been there longer.

If I could do things again it would have been looking round some places before she needed to go in, so she could think about what she cared about and what she didn't so we were more able to prioritise that. In the end we didn't get much choice as the NHS arranged it under CHC funding.

This is a timely thread as I was about to ask the same.

I'm not sure my mum will ever settle but she is very flighty and has moved so many times in her life the dawning realisation this is it will be a terrible shock. Had a long face time this morning with her in floods of tears. It's a worry.

Has moved to nursing home following 3 weeks in hospital. Needs too great now.

Does have some possessions, photos etc.

Ok dont understand your response.

A couple of months (compos mentis but very frail, this followed several months in hospital after a fall). That was 6 months ago, he's resigned rather than settled I'd say now. But because we were in crisis mode dealing with all the finances, logistics and a mum who wasn't coping at home without him we didn't get round to bringing possessions, pictures etc in at first which I feel bad about.

Does she know that it's permanent? If not, can you suggest that it's what the doctors say she needs 'for now'? Having a little hope that there could be alternative arrangements or something different gives her time to get used to it,whilst still having some hope. Losing independence, your home, and any hope of improvement at the same time is such a lot to get used to.

My mum cried for the first week. By two months or so she was much more relaxed. One of the things that helped was a large teddy bear which gave her a lot of comfort, whilst she was settling and afraid.

Best of luck.

I think it depends how capable she is. At 80 years old my mum stayed in a care home for 2 weeks to recover after an operation. We arranged a 2 week package of care visits to her house but she soon showed she was back to normal and was fine at home.
At 85 though she had a stroke , went partially sighted and lost some cognitive skills. She went into a care home but would not settle. I had to have a very blunt talk with her about her not being safe on her own. We told her to make cup of tea for herself under supervision and she couldn't do it. That was a blow as she used to make tea all the time. She couldn't use the TV remote either. We persuaded her that we couldn't be there all the time as we had to work and had young children. We persuaded her that we would be less worried this way. We tried to get her to treat it as a bit of a hotel and say the staff were there to wait on her. The staff were brilliant, letting her do what she could but always keeping a wary eye on her.
We never took her back to her house, but let her visit ours and took her for days out as well as visiting a lot.
That helped a bit but it took a good year before she referred to the care home as home. We knew she was really settled when she started to refer to the staff affectionately as " The girls".
We were very lucky in the quality of her care. I hope things work out the same for your mum.

Yes she knows it's permanent.
Yes she agrees she needs to be there.
Currently almost entirely in bed, needs a hoist to move out of bed.
Dad is visiting daily.

By settling i guess I mean feeling OK with the routine, trusting the carers and the nurses, getting familiar with the different carers etc.

That does sound very much like my DF, and yes a couple of months I would say to that stage. We had a few issues at first because he has a speech and language impairment (very slow both in and out) and they weren’t giving him long enough to process what they were saying and put together a reply, but guessing and talking over him, but on the whole they seem to have got used to that now and give him time. He also had a spell of worrying about how much it all cost and wanting to move somewhere cheaper but that really wouldn’t have made that much difference and the rest of us prefer the one he’s in and are ok that is costs a bit more. It really is a steep learning curve for the whole family.

Everyone is different OP, it depends on the person and their attitude. Some settle immediately (my DM), others think they are only there for a short time and never really settle.

The majority of residents do settle eventually. If they have FC they find their tribe pretty quickly. Hopefully the other residents who have capacity are given activities that promote socialising.

Staff turnover in most care homes is very high. It’s also sometimes difficult for residents to get used to particular people because of the lack of consistency, with different shift patterns, agency staff and staff being moved around different areas of the home.

There are a lot of activities if DM gets to the point where she can be up in a wheelchair and energy to enjoy them (neither of which is definite).
Must get her to choose a couple of pictures for the walls.

If you don't like communal living, never.