Councils are moving care home residents to save money – and endangering lives

[HollyhocksandPeons]

Councils are moving care home residents to save money – and endangering lives

Don't know what to say - just wanted to flag it up. Heart breaks, literally.

Source: Councils are moving care home residents to save money – and endangering lives

I know someone whose wealthy parents downsided from a huge house to a small flat and gave their immediate family most available assets. After a few years, the Dad died and the Mum developed dementia. The Mum went into the most expensive care home in South West London. After two years she ran out of money and the Council proposed moving her to a cheaper care home. The family (very wealthy) threatened to fight them in court, claiming a move was not fair on someone with dementia, and the Council backed down . The Mum lived for another seven or eight years in an incredibly luxurious care home paid for by the Local Authority. The system is discretionary and down to individual judgements and in the end the wealthy can afford the legal battles to ensure the state pays.

@catofglory. I had same experience, the council did cover the full cost in my case without any fuss, but the home wasn’t one of the newer swanky ones with fancy facilities that I’d toured, it had painted woodchip on the walls, pictures that were a mishmash faded from sun, chairs in the dayroom were tired but the staff were brilliant, friendly, dealt with the complex family situation (I had made all the arrangements, done paperwork despite being the ex granddaughter in law

I wish there was a cross party consensus for the NHS as a whole. It's the only way to get radical reform which is desperately needed. The whole of social care is a mess.

My Mum is in a nice care home. It's currently £1450 a week. That's about £200 a week more than paying privately at a care home where we would still have to pay full fees but they also take in from local authority.
I had to prove that I had 2 years of cash for her to get the place. The sale of her modest home plus her cash and her state pension, £200 a month private pension and attendance allowance help. I am praying that she goes before the money runs out. One decision i did make was that the money might as well be spent in this way. As she has dementia I hope that if the money does run out, it will be at a point that she has no idea.
All grim but all true.

People need to really look at the quality of care in homes. I worked in one as a young adult that had beautiful features and a caretaker who would touch up scuffed paintwork weekly. I wouldn't have put my cat in there for care.

I think a bigger ticking timebomb is if you pay the shortfall for your mum/dad’s care, that stops you saving for your own care, so who then pays for yours? I think there should be proper council funded care homes as the norm and expensive ones as the exception but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

I don’t think the mortgage costs for the building should come into the costs of care as a mortgage is finite and leveraged on an appreciating asset. Once they have been in business 20 years the mortgage should be paid off, would that then significantly reduce the care home fees? Mysteriously not. Buying the property is another means of profit and should be financed by the business owner unless they don’t have the capital to run the type of business they have chosen.

@Freysimosorry do you work in social care? I think you can only say it’s a mess if you’re working in the sector. We genuinely change people’s lives for the better in the majority of cases.

@Louglei agree! I saw one care home which had a barista and beautiful grounds, but the care offered could not hold a candle to the one on local authority rates which went above and beyond. In my experience.

Frail and very elderly people are no longer allowed to pass away peacefully. Once upon a time the family doctor would come, granny/grandad would be made comfortable and family would sit with them until the end came. Now its all ambulances/3 days on a trolley in a corridor , pumped with antibiotics, rehydrated and and sent back home for a few more weeks/months of misery, for them and their loved ones. Many of these poor souls are ridden with dementia and have no idea whats going on. Its scandalous.
My mother foresaw this and put a DNAR in place while she still had capacity.
She passed away peacefully after just a few weeks in a care home

NHS covers health care, not social care - that is the problem.

I definitely do not want to disparage anyone who works in social care. They do their best in a difficult situation. It needs more funding and reorganisation imo. I worked in the NHS before I retired and I've never worked in social care but I volunteered in a care home and have seen first hand the problems my elderly neighbour faced.

I'm old myself and I dread needing care.

The 'for profit' was forced onto LA's by Thatcher, and those who followed, who privatised everything. It was pointed out at the time what would happen, bit like gas/electricity providers, but went ahead anyway.

I indirectly work with care homes and have done for so for over 10 years.

In my opinion, we need local authorities to build and run their own not for profit care homes. I have met far too many care home owner operators who have accumulated so much wealth they don't know what to do with it. Even their grandchildren won't have to work a day in their life and have the life of luxury.

Social care should not be for profit.

Same goes for children's care homes and fostering agencies.

This requires a long term solution and a patient public, we can't keep changing PMs otherwise nothing will get resolved.

Everybody in a care home has a Respect Form where care interventions , if unwell, are agreed. If this level of intervention is happening (which i think is unlikely), it's because the family have asked for it.

The local authority where my mum lives pays £900 per week, there are no homes that charge that ,they are all £1,400+.

You can if you do it years before. I’m in my 50s and lots of people I know are already signing things over to their kids now..

I was literally talking to someone yesterday who was doing this now. She’s 52, same as me. It’s madness to be out of control of your own finances like that. I asked her what would happen if her sons were run over by a bus and the married son’s wife decided to sell the house but she just said nonsense like ‘well, it would still be my house though’.

That’s absolutely insane.

Yes, but you can’t withdraw medication. Very few nursing home residents are on 0 medication. And that medication is keeping them alive. This is where ethical dilemmas come in to play.
I’ve worked in enough nursing homes to know I’d rather be allowed to go on my merry way than kept effectively ‘locked’ away for the remainder of my life. You have very few freedoms once you go into a home (of course not all homes are run in a draconian fashion, but many are, due to staffing numbers) so all residents up and dressed by 7:00 am even if you have had a shite nights sleep and want to stay in bed. Breakfast is normally toast and or cereal, mandatory prunes, possibly kippers and if you are really lucky scrambled egg made from powdered eggs, a watery tea of coffee, possibly a tiny glass of juice, which never saw an apple or orange go anywhere near it. After breakfast wheeled or accompanied into the living room, where you can sit for hours, listening to music which was your parents era, and which you never liked. Toiletted when you are told, not when you want to go, and sitting on a pad, ‘just in case’. Lunch at midday which you may or may not like, and too bad if you don’t like it. After lunch maybe a nap after toileting or more sitting round in the lounge snoozing in a chair trying to ignore the distress of other inmates. If you are lucky you might have a visitor, and if you are really, really lucky you might be allowed back into the quiet of your room to talk to your visitor in private and without endless interruptions and in an amazing home you and your guest might be brought a cup of tea that resembles dishwasher water and a bit of dried up fruit cake. Meal at 5:30 pm followed by a bath or shower (if and only if it’s your turn for one) and bed, with lights out at 9:30 tough luck if you want to read! Obviously not all homes are like this, but many, many are, and that’s not how I want to spend the last few years of my life thank you very much, and to add insult to injury knowing that I’m having to pay for my incarceration.

Blimey!

Just shoot me!

Me too!! This is what I want to avoid. I would rather have fewer years and get out while I’m still physically and mentally able to.

@anunlikelyseahorse I've seen this over the past year or so. Both with friends who were dying from cancer (stage 4). Some of the staff do try their best, but they are in a minority.
One for my friends was transferred out of a hospice to spend their last few weeks into such a home, having lived past the 14 day limit there, the comparison was like day and night. Of course the hospice benefits from charity status, plus lots of volunteer helps, the 'home' was just a cash cow.

What’s the bloody point?

Is that a happy life?

Also, I’d rather leave my money to my children than line the pockets of the care provider.

An aunt of mine, with worsening dementia, had to be moved to a different care home, because her behaviour was starting to bother the non dementia residents. I should add that we were warned that this would probably be the case eventually.

We were very worried about the move but TBH she barely seemed to notice - at that stage her short term memory was probably practically zero.

There is”no bloody point!!” It sounds dire. I really want to die while I’m still healthy and able to.