How to help an elderly parent step back from caring for adult daughter

[ohtobe4]

I need some peoples experience please.
Sister in Law is very disabled, and lives full time in a care home. MiL has run into several arguments with the home about the care given to her. MiL is 78, SiL is mid 50's. In a nutshell, the care home is saying MiL should back off and let the home look after SiL. Because MiL is 78 they're saying she can't have her daughter at home anymore and is not allowed to lift her on and off the toilet anymore, limiting any trips out she does with SiL to 2 hours.
MiL is not happy. How can we - or should we? - get MiL to back off and accept she is no longer fit to manage the care of SiL?

If anyone has experience of when parents accept they are no longer fit to care, how and when did this realisation happen?

Thank you.

MIL may have legitimate concerns about the care given.

Why can’t trips out with MIL/SIL be supported by staff?

Even if MIL can’t physically care for SIL, she can still be involved in SIL’s care and care planning. Having family involvement is often in the person’s best interest.

MiL would like SiL (let's call her Mary) overnight at home, and to be able to take mary out on trips as often as she likes. MiL is usually late taking Mary back to the home which I think annoys the staff. MiL often tells the staff how to care for Mary which they do not always do as MiL's ways conflict with the home's Health and Safety terms.
I don't know if accompanied trips out have been offered, but I would imagine MiL would say no to that as Mary would then be cared for by the home's rules, and not the way MiL likes things done.
Dh and I have tried to explain that the home has to abide by standards and rules, but MiL just won't have it, and now they are limiting her involvement.

Obviously I don’t know MIL or SIL and it isn’t possible for all, but lots of people have overnight home visits, so they might be possible.

Do MIL’s ways really conflict with H&S, or is that just what the staff are saying? Sometimes it can be a case of placements doing it one way because that is the way they have always done it and when families suggest a different way that has always worked for their relative, staff use excuses.

Limiting involvement can be complex. You and DH might find it helpful to look at some of the media attention particularly earlier this year around families being blocked by placements/LAs from seeing relatives. It is easy to blame the families in cases where access is blocked, but that is often the easy option when families are pushing for their relative to receive the right support for them.

Mary has been in her current care home for at least 15 years now, and has previously had lots of (multiple) overnight stays at home.
Now though, the home are saying that it is not safe for MiL to care for Mary alone at home. I have to agree to be honest, Mary is quite overweight, and MiL is starting to lose strength now.

MiL has been told by the home that she is to stop helping Mary in specific ways as it goes against H and Safety regulations. The home have sent equipment to MiL to help, but MiL can't operate the equipment because she doesn't understand how it works, or is not strong enough to manipulate it. We live a long way away so are not around to help.
MiL is getting very angry with the home, and she keeps telling the home that her ways are better than their ways. Obviously this doesn't go down very well.
We need to persuade MiL to back off, and let them do their jobs.

I was wondering at what age to parents tend to let go of the care for their disabled children?

Do you have any links to the media stuff, or remember where they were?
Thanks

This is just one article, but there are others. It hasn’t got to the point of Orders with MIL yet, but I wanted to highlight that MIL may have a point and just because the placement is pulling back, it doesn’t mean they are right.

Would MIL accept carers at home for overnight stays?

There isn’t a set age. They should be involved as long as they want to be involved, IMO.

Thanks for this scoopofmint. I can see how stuff in that article happens.
As far as I know, MiL hasn't been offered anyone to supervise overnight stays.

Essentially in our case though, Dh and I agree with the care home that MiL is no longer fit or strong enough to manage Mary by herself. We are dreading the day we get a phone call saying she's had an accident and either her or Mary are hurt. But MiL just won't back down and accept that the care home takes pretty good care of Mary and she should accept their ways, and support. We don't know how to get to through to MiL that she is getting too old!

I have a DD in a care home. She’s been there seven years. Apart from the fact, they have onsite professionals like nurses, speech therapists, etc, I would say, when it comes to her day to day care, we can do everything better than they do!

They ask us regularly for advice on how to handle her. Only this week, they wrote to me, asking us to tell her to go to bed at a reasonable time when she’s there - because she’s up all night there, watching TV. Then, she’s sleeping all day, missing meals, not taking any exercise - all making her medical condition worse. We don’t have that. We get her up for breakfast at a normal time every day, she gets three meals at regular mealtimes, we try to take her out in the daytime (but we can’t force her) and we take her to bed, when we go - she sleeps all night in bed!

There’s a GP in my family, who says they or their colleagues visit care homes every week, and they are all dangerous. They make safeguarding referral after referral and nothing ever comes of them, probably because Social Services wouldn’t have anywhere else to put the residents, if the care home closed down.

MIL might be right too. I don’t see why the care home is restricting MIL’s access to SIL to two hours? It’s in breach of SIL’s right to a private family life under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. The care home should provide care staff to go out with MIL and SIL - or is the reality that the staffing ratios too low for that? It sounds more like protecting the care home’s best interests than SIL’s.

Thanks @LathkillDale
I/DH need to find out more from MiL I think, and see what exactly has been said.
I mean, the bottom line I suppose is that neither me nor DH think she should have 'Mary' overnight anymore due to her decreasing strength and ability to manoeuvre Mary around. Let alone if they fell or had an accident.

It could well be overnight is too much for MIL, but a careworker could be there with MIL and SIL in the daytime? Only you know how frail MIL is?

Hijack - calling @LathkillDale
What type of home is your DD in? We are currently looking for one for DS (with medical support) and I am very worried about the level of care, even just based on a relatively short period of respite.

Is the home near London? If so, I would like to pm you.

@ohtobe4 we are now coming to realisation that ds needs to be in a care home, this is mainly due to various medical issues we are facing.

I think there are lots of ways to facilitate both day trips and overnight stays. I can’t see that it is in SIL interest to stop seeing her mother outside the care home or to never stay overnight. I would start from “how can we support both mil and sil to get what they want”.