Ranulph Fiennes - care home restrictions, DoLS ?

[Mixymaxymoxy]

Ranulph Fiennes - does anyone understand what’s happening with him? I’ve read several articles that say his wife has LPA, has put him in a care home / several care homes under false names and against his will, and various friends / relatives are outraged about how he’s being treated. He has Parkinson’s. It’s not clear whether he has capacity.

The article talks about excessive restrictions being placed on his freedom, preventing him from seeing friends etc. The phrase in one article is ‘arrangements for his care were subsequently found to amount to an unauthorised deprivation of his liberty.’ How does that come about? It doesn’t say how these ‘arrangements’ come to be in place? is it just his wife telling the home not to let anyone visit him? Telling them that he has to wear a disguise on walks etc? I’ve only had one relative in a care home, but I can’t imagine the staff there going along with bizarre requests like this 🤷‍♀️ But how would it have worked if we’d said, for example, that specific individuals were not allowed to visit her? Are care homes required to follow instructions from relatives like that?

The article also talks about the lack of a DOLS but implies that his wife should be supplying this to the home: I thought it was the care provider who’d need to apply for this, not family?

i know that there are very knowledgable people on this board and wondered what your take on this story was.

There's another man involved, Michael Kobold. He's tweeting videos and photographs.
I just read his blog about it. He has a beef going back years with RF's wife. I do not think he is acting in good faith. Ditto the ex Sister-in-law.
I think the wife is protecting RF from these strange people.

It isn't just them, though. Joseph Fiennes (cousin SRF had also filmed with) had to sneak in to see him and has expressed concern, including writing to the OPG. Also, other old friends like Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, Ben Fogle, Bear Grylls, Joanna Lumley and John Simpson are expressing serious disquiet and that's just the well known ones.

How likely is it that they all have an axe to grind or are all 'strange'?

You act like Kobold is some random weirdo but he’s a high profile German entrepreneur who’s been involved in several joint expeditions with Sir Ranulph. He’s another like the list of well known UK expeditioners and celebrities who have expressed concern.

It's easy to express concern though or want to see your old friend without fully understanding the day to day reality of life with advanced Parkinsons or dementia. Perhaps he doesn't want to be visited by Joanna Lumley when he's hallucinating, or incontinent or on his last legs.

I don't doubt it's right for the state to check up on his welfare and ensure the DoL is appropriate or not, but the fact that his long-term friends can't see him at these last stages of life isn't weird to me, at least.

The relationship between his wife and himself sounds very odd and possibly controlling, but then he did stay with her all that time prior to his Parkinsons and allow her to have the PoA whilst he had capacity.

It reminds me a bit of the Stephen Hawkings case where the second wife was accused (by him even, I seem to remember) of controlling/assaulting him and then everything was withdrawn and he said that was untrue and carried on living with her. He did eventually have a carer that was struck off, who had cared for him for 15 years. It was all very odd in so many ways.

In my mums case the hospital and later the care home applied for DOLS. Relatives don’t make this call, the are not the ones depriving anyone of liberty while in another setting.

Weirdo is one way to describe him. Link to his rant blog.

There's definitely 'a rabbit away', as my Dad would say, but this bloke's an unreliable narrator. The stepson and the ex SIL are unreliable too, they have axes to grind.
I'm giving the wife, the police and the OPG the benefit of the doubt.

https://t.co/yeFu6WJG0g

@Fernsarethebestplants ”the fact that his long-term friends can't see him at these last stages of life isn't weird to me, at least.”

no one is suggesting that it’s odd. I don’t think so anyway?

You're giving a very balanced view @Fernsarethebestplants and I totally agree that his wishes should be paramount. If he has indeed expressed the wish to have a very high degree of privacy, I think if his wife had talked openly to friends and family about this and the reasons why it would be different. Moving him around residential homes under false names isn't going to inspire anything but alarm, though.

I just saw on lunchtime news he has been put into various care homes by his wife who has LPOA. And under a false name. It sounds really dodgy. And friends and family aren't allowed to visit or contact him.

I can't tell what's going on at all with this one, but it strikes me that both sides may think they are in the right. Friends think it's weird they can't see him, the wife may think she's doing his wishes and that only she knows him. That's why it is right to formally check up on him.

It just needs a check but in order to do so they needed to know where hhe was, the friends and family were right to raise the issue.

I have seen POA abused. My ex-friend got POA for her very wealthy but fragile father and had him in bargain basement care homes, presumably to preserve the inheritance. Her brother lives abroad and was unaware of what was going on for ages, she brought dad back to the house for Xmas and visits and waxed lyrical about the home. A friend of the fathers managed to raise it and then he spent a couple of years trying to legally challenge it before the dad died. Absolutely ruthless and destroyed the family , I'm not sure how you can prevent that without friends and family raising the alarm.

I have read about cases like this on MN previously. It's an important issue and hopefully because it's happening with SRF, an intervention can happen for him AND lead to a change for all.

I have, and am using, POA for my Mum. I have some experience of it.

There should be a ln official capacity check for the Health POA and it shouldn't be on say so of the POA only. The Finance POA should also have this OR signed and witnessed instructions by the person that they want to enact the POA.

There should be someone to report concerns about POA to. I guess the Office of the Public Guardian is supposed to be this someone, but I'm not sure they do actually do anything and their backlog would suggest they are significantly understaffed.

In SRF case, they should be actively investigating - with the police if necessary - and then take over as a Guardian in the Attorney's place as significant issues have already been raised.

It is possible that SRF has been coercively controlled since he met his wife. You can't just assume that he (or anyone else) made the POA decision freely.

Most people using POA are using them in the best interests of the person. But that doesn't mean no one is abusing them.

I was a nurse in a nursing home until recently. We had a resident whose presence in the home we could not confirm or deny to any family member or friend. This was because she was being financially exploited by a close family member, and we were concerned about protecting her from further harm.
Unfortunately, other family members and friends refused to accept that this person should be kept away from her and would tell him where she was. She had already had to leave previous care homes because he would turn up multiple times a day and even harass staff.

The multiple moves smacks of paranoia. Some of the texts from his second wife that have been released sound unhinged. I agree that some of the parties talking to papers have potentially mixed motives but not all of the people that have been concerned enough to write to the OPG etc.

I've no idea what the story is but he's a rich man, possibly nearing the end of his life and it struck me that all those very concerned for him are "step" and "in law" relatives.

I'll guarantee there's more to the story than what they'd have you believe.

If the wife has POA, the stepson or ex SIL can hardly get him to change his will can they? All they can do is sell stories or write books to benefit…

I was going to say this sounds like a predatory marriage, but she's been married to him for 20+ years and those normally take place once the target is already frail. It's a glaring loophole that legislation seems lacking for.

I am very surprised that care homes don't do actual ID checks on their clients?

He may well not have wished for distant family, friends and acquaintances to see him in a state of dementia. If he is being chased from care home to care home by people trying to get close to him and take intrusive photos of him in a frail state, I am not surprised his wife has moved him and tried to protect his identity.

People like Joanna Lumley, Joseph Fiennes etc would not be selling snappy snaps even without an NDA, and I fancy the times and telegraph wouldn’t buy them from anyone selling them.

@Lalgarh one could argue that the relationship started when he was emotionally vulnerable, in mourning - several months after his wife of 30+ years had died. You could speculate that having a very long happy marriage to your childhood sweetheart (they'd known each other since he was 12) might make someone a man bit naïve about 'the relationship scene' for want of a better phrase.

I'm surprised that she could (apparently) marry her first husband with a pseudonym - no ID required for that either? Or maybe had forged ID?

Looks like he's back at their home, behind a 6 foot gate 😕

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16167857/Sir-Ranulph-Fiennes-isolated-farmhouse-hidden-6ft-gate.html

I should say that moving someone from many care homes isn't weird to me - my sister and I did it with Mum who had Parkinson's. She went through something like seven care homes in six years. One of them in Banstead, Surrey, very nearly killed her. Not much complaint or concern from Social Services when that happened! Many care homes are utter crap and just money-making rackets. Each time we moved, we dodged a bullet but they got her in the end, albeit when she was physically at the end of her rope anyway.

Social Services would try to stop us moving her, they would try every trick in the book, I could write a book about it. This was for all sorts of reasons and make no mistake the care homes were subject to the Council, there was a pecking order. One reason I suspected was if care homes get a bonus for placing the elderly on end-of-life care and if we moved her, they would be denied that - the next care home would come in and snap it up, like a goalhanger!

We were self-funding but as we did not have LPA in Health and Welfare, the Surrey County Council stepped in to assert control - despite the fact that the Banstead care home that had nearly killed her, they knew all about its failings from the CQC but, erm, had decided not to inform residents or families.

In such circs, there will likely be a 'battle of the narratives'.

How did you know she was being financially exploited? Did a member of her family tell the home this?

No, a social worker and her GP

The Telegraph story said that at least for a while his wife had had him in a care home that cost £4000 a week. So whatever else she’s doing, it wasn’t necessarily obvious that she was stinting financially on his care (though it may be that part of what she’s paying for is a situation she feels she can control).

It’s a strange story. Like a PP I’ve wondered if there are sides of it we’re not hearing. There a clearly a lot of people who have a sense of ownership of him, and the fact that they don’t like his second wife doesn’t automatically mean that she’s in the wrong. But at this point the range of people who have spoken out makes her being in the wrong look more likely than that it’s one or two people with a vendetta against her. Plus as others have said it’s hard to see how moving him repeatedly could be for his own good, unless his wife feels very strongly (maybe wrongly) that he wouldn’t like wider friends and family to see him in a diminished condition and she feels she needs to protect his privacy.