What do you think about being forced to look after elderly parents? Baroness Deech says we should.

[BendyBob]

Here Would you do it? Should you be forced to do it?? Would you want dc to look after you?

I understand care of an ageing population needs more consideration, but no, I think I could not do it nor would I want dc to do it for me either.

My MIL has had her mum move in with her.
MILs mum has dementure and is hard bloody work!
We had her to stay with us many times to give MIL a break, but it is so so hard on our DC.
Our Dc are aged 2 and 8.
8yr old finds it hard to understand and not get upset when his great nan is stroppy with him (she has mood swings and it is hard to reason with her as she is often confused) and Dh & I are always on watch as she has done some really unsafe thing around out 2yr old.
We could not have her live with us full time.

I will never, ever care for my mother when she is old.
She will get no financal help from us.
She was and is a fuckwit.
I have no proof that she ruined my childhood.
How on earth could I be expected to look after her?!
MIL can move in now and stay forever though!

I would look after my mum and dad but no way is FIL/MIL coming here

I didn't get days a week of childcare either. My parents didn't have their parents to live with us when we were growing up. I don't mind them being in a granny flat or annexe but I work from home and having people around while I work would be impossible.

I think people have to be more realistic about care of the elderly. I hear people whinging that their mother's home has had to be sold to fund her care home, yet they won't look after mother. The equation is simple: care for elderly parent + inherit their house = put elderly parent in car home + lose the money from the house in care home fees.

I would like to think DH and I would look after our parents, but the trouble is we live hundreds of miles from both sets, and they live hundreds of miles apart. I don't know how we'll be able to look after both sets of parents in the future.

My mother has had two strokes and is very wobbly and muddled. She lives at home, and has a carer in every day which works fine at the moment. My sister and I live a fair distance away, and when we suggested to my mother that she moved nearer or in with either of us she was absolutely adamant that she stayed put.

She has said that if she does have to move out of her own home there is no way she will come to us, quite rightly she wants to stay put.

So, how do you enforce that we look after her in these circumstances? My mother does not want us caring for her, she finds her weaknesses embarrassing and frustrating and said that she would find it demeaning if we were "feeding her and wiping her bum". There's no way that we would go against her wishes.

Also, in the report it says that children should care for their parents in return for the childcare given to them. Neither my mother nor my MIL have looked after my children apart from I think 2 or 3 occasions.

It's a typical, badly thought out attention grabbing statement which will achieve nothing. I agree that we are bad at looking after our elders, but not that this is the way forward.

jeee I think you are right

I think the latter posts are hitting the nail on the head, it isnt necessarily about having them live you but more about helping them financially if necessary and if able, practically - again if able.

My mum used to clean an old gentlemans house who we knew when we were younger and there came a time when he decided to go into a home as he realised he couldnt manage but because he made the decision and his children and he could afford a lovely place he is very very happy, but if you have to rely on state homes then it is a rather sad prospect.

I think we definitely need to have better standards of care for the elderly mentally ill.

As others have pointed out, looking after someone with dementia, who is aggressive, is extremely difficult.

The Baroness's proposal is unworkable.

The government needs to fund better care homes, sheltered homes and enforce tougher regulations, so that no one is just lined up in rows in front of the tv. Also, more home carers should be funded. Oh, and better rehab facilities for stroke sufferers, e.t.c.

If taxes have to be increased to do this, then so be it. Or we could stop funding stupid wars, but that's another issue.

In a nutshell, the government needs to invest in elderly care and stop shirking it's responsibilities.

I get no free childcare so I certainly don't owe anyone for that!

If someone told me I HAD to, I wouldn't. No way. I may help of my own free will but I will not be a slave to my parents. I've seen how looking after her sick MIL has destroyed my MIL and will not let that happen to my family.

Don't know if this has been mentioned before, sorry if it has.

As many others have said it's ok in principle, but often not practicable.

I'm an only who's parents had her when they were young. My dad's family also tend to live very long lives. This means I have the prospect of looking after 100 year old parents when I'm in my 80's.

Neither do I want my children to look after me. As a parent my job is to take care of them until they are old enough to take care of themselves. Anyway, I've seen the mess they make of wiping their own bums...

Christ almighty, I would buy a fake identity and disappear to Guatemala before I'd look after my ILs.

This woman is a fucking moron.

'The government needs to fund better care homes, sheltered homes and enforce tougher regulations, so that no one is just lined up in rows in front of the tv'

This was my view until my mother reached late 80s. She cannot walk any distance, most of her friends have passed away and, if she does meet the remaining ones, there is little to chat about as she does very little.

Of course me and siblings take her out but there are limits when you are confined to a wheelchair and what do you need to buy if you don't go out much and don't eat much.

You can take frail oldies for a drive but that's not so great in the winter and, of course, you need regular stops for the loo.

My Mum loves her tele. Heartbeat, Keeping up Appearances, Come Dine with Me and any quizzes.

Think about it - how do you entertain oldies for, say, 16 hours a day.

I think the latter posts are hitting the nail on the head, it isnt necessarily about having them live you but more about helping them financially if necessary and if able, practically - again if able

well, there is the agument that if there are the means to pay for their care via house sale savings etc - then that should happen and childen don't want to/ can't pay they don't inherit - sensible arrangement. I don't really see how you can see placing a fincial burden on grown children as an alternative to house sale for end of life care - why keep a house that isn't going to be lived in? why place a burden on someone else before having exhausted your own resources? Even if you bring a person requiring care into your own home, yo may to employ expensive additional outside help - and need access to aditional funds.

for those that want to care for elderly relatives - house sale & our own time could be necessary. for those that don't...it seems very wrong for the state to force them.

the way it works in germany is that my friends husband is legally held reponsible for care bills from a father (feckless and bankrupt) he owes no duty of care too - how can that be right?

fuckin' hell, sorry, but i'd rather be dead than like some of these parents and IL.

i plan to go back to drinking and smoking if i ever hit 70 and hope it finishes me off.

i'll stop taking my medication for hypertension or whatever else i've got, like my dad's older brother, move to the US where DNRs and living wills count, and let nature take its course.

Care homes for the elderly being so dreadful appears to be seen as an immovable fact and for families that are forced to use them to feel guilty about doing so.

Why can't more be done to radically improve the quality of them? That is where we should be looking for a solution imo.

Because radically improving things tends to cost lots of money which the country doesn't have.

The problem is we are living too long in poor health. Things that would have killed you twenty years ago are now "manageable" and let you stagger on for years with low quality of life.

Like expatinscotland, I plan to self medicate to spare myself ten years lying catatonic in a home that smells of wee while everyone secretly prays for me to die.

(ps will also make sure I die penniless to serve people who wished me dead right- Ha)

That'd be a good way for the government to force women to do even more unpaid labour than they already do...and to get out of paying for elderly care out of taxes.

It makes me so angry when I come accross daughters-in-laws being ground down by caring for their husbands' parents. The man never does the care work, he leaves it to his wife or his sisters.

Besides that, would that mean daughters having to care for men who sexually abused them and for mothers who emotionally and physcially abused them. I would never care for my abusive mother; my mental health has dramatically improved since I cut contact with her.

It just goes on.

I would never expect my children to care for me. Hopefully, I'll be independent in my home until I die, but if not there are far worse fates than a care home.

FIL has dementia so we've had a bit of contact with this.

"Caring" for an elderly person is actually pretty specialised work, especially when they completely unable to wash, go to the toilet or dress themselves.

I agree completely with sakura; that's the main reason that DH and I would never move clsoer to his folks. DH would continue life as normal - I would be left with the shitty drugery.

FIL is in a home now, using up DH's inheritance, but we're completely cool with that. There's no way we can care for him so it's quite right that we forfeit inheritance to pay for better care.

I think that people should be encouraged to work for longer through a tailored retirement not a "big bang", and that this should be easier to do without affecting your pension. There should be ways to save for your old age, and it should be harder not to do this (too many people have no pension plans at all). There should be ways to get people to think about how they would want to live in older age - keeping independence for as long as possible seems to have the best outcome, but often requires moving before you get infirm (my parents for example live in a five floor house that is obviously getting unsuitable for them no, let alone the future) so that you have built your support network, friends and associations in the new place.

I don't think that taxing away inheritance is the way to do it, as that would seriously penalise those who have been prudent, which is what you want to encourage (if you want people to save for an uncertain length of infirm old age you need them to hang onto their money, and not have them worry that if they die before they've spent their money it will all be lost to their family). That's always one of the issues though - how do we encourage people to be self reliant without removing too much of a safety net, and conversely how do we make the safety net small enough that people don't rely on it too much, but large enough that people who need it aren't in poverty.

Haven't read all the posts.

My mother is in institutional care, and will be until she dies.

My SIL and DAunt care for her by visiting daily and doing her laundry, buying toiletries etc. My dad visits every day. Other siblings visit more sporadically (including me, but I live 400 miles away, so only manage every 2-3 months).

She is the exception. Very few patients have families who are involved in their care. It is very, very sad.

I asked my SIL how she does it, and she just says that she has to. She accepts it as her responsibility, and is doing a wonderful job. There really isn't anything in it for her (no money in a will). She is just taking on family responsibility and is absolutely amazing.

Neither have I read all the posts but just want to say this:

My father has been diagnosed with Severe Senile Dimentia only last week. I am one of five siblings and have been estranged from him for a long time, only seeing him at xmas when visiting sister, but was shocked at the state of him. He has been ripped off financially from a very younger woman for thousands of pounds and we can do nothing about it because he signed the cheques . Anyway, we are not going to put him into a home, we are selling his and trying to find sheltered housing for him where he will have medical attention if he needs it and we are close at hand for the day to day things, shopping, bathing etc. Why should the money from our family home, (one which my mother contributed to all her life until she died), be sold to pay for care in a home that we know he will end up sitting in a chair all day.

I detailed om another thread re the years I spent with five ill relatives. I do not want to raise that again but instead highlight the much more positive outcome with regard to my Uncle. He is 88 now and had lived alone for 50 years, since my DGM died. He was very private, reclusive, indeed quite resentful when we made contact from time to time to see that he was all right. We met him at the market one day and he seemed confused and was unshaven and untidy. Before we could think of a way to approach him, within a fortnight, he collapsed in the street with a stroke and landed up in hospital.

We learned that he had not been taking his medication for months, had not drawn his pension either and his once immaculate home was like a pig sty - no bedding, no pyjamas, one shirt, two jumpers about 30 pairs of socks. Anyway, after months in hospital, rehab, assessment unit, he was offered a place in the LA Care Home, which he refused -he felt better & wanted desperately to go home. Eventually I had to tell him that if he did not go to the home voluntarily, he would be sectioned and he agreed to try it. Two years now, and he LOVES it. It is a super, warm and friendly place, does not smell, 3 'home cooked' meals + supper, his own clean clothes, someone to apply his ointment and see he takes his medication, new glasses, new teeth and special shoes for his bad feet, hair cut every month, excercise classes, reminicance groups, visiting entertainers, regular outings. Best of all he has his own private, ensuite room, a conservatory where he sits, usually alone, to read, a nice garden and he is free to go out for a walk every day. His general health is excellent and he can converse lucidly, if a bit repetitively. For me it has meant getting to know an Uncle I never knew, who is the last link with my beloved father.

I know he is one of the lucky ones, places only become available when someone dies. I just wanted to point out that with decent funding and staff care homes can be great, worry free solutions for elderly, frail people.

I agree with all those who say that when people say families should look after their old people, they mean women should.

It ain't men who clear up the shit.