So after we are done raising our children...

[OlennasWimple]

....or perhaps while we are still doing it, we now need to be responsible for caring for our elderly parents as well?

I know this isn't a new thing, I know we have an aging population, I know in an ideal world the elderly would be looked after in their own homes for as long as possible, I know that there are no easy answers.... But I wish someone could come up with one that didn't essentially involve women being shouldered with another domestic responsibility

Unfortunately , the line between what constitutes nursing care and other kinds of care is not clear. People in care homes often have their medication dealt with by care assistants. They will also have other 'traditionally" nursing roles done for them by unqualified staff. Even in nursing homes the bulk of care is done by unqualified staff who may or may not be supervised by a qualified nurse.

ivy. Yes, you're right. And the person who will find it more cost-effective to go on a cruise, will be the person who is appropriate for a care home, not a nursing home.

The bureaucracy involved in both has a detrimental effect on the quality of the care.

Having spent 20 years dealing with an ever increasing number of HCPs across the board I have seen the unrelenting inability to connect dots and provide a cohesive service as nothing short of a scandal.

Which is now coming home to roost in the form of some bloke telling women everywhere to get your act together and take over, please. Ok

• I don't know where that Ok came from, I'm not agreeing with him!

I very much noticed this shift last year. My mother became terminally ill, and my dad cared for her at their home (an hour and a half drive from me, five minutes walk from my brother).

A couple of months before she died it was clear that my dad needed help, and so I suggested they move in with me so I could pitch in properly (I have two young children in local schools). There was no offer from my brother to pop round and help every day so they could stay in their own home. When her consultant heard she was coming to stay, he said "yes, your dad has done a great job so far, but perhaps it's your turn now". He never said anything like this to my brother.

I'm self-employed and had to cancel a couple of contracts so I could care for my mum and children full-time. I don't begrudge this at all, but I was irritated when my brother said to me "it's good you don't have a proper job and can choose your hours as I can't do that or I'd have helped more". I can choose my hours, yes, but every day I don't work means no money at all, and I did suffer financially and professionally. Also, because I apparently have no proper job and tons of time on my hands, the burden of sorting the funeral and doing the probate fell on me. My brother did nothing, as he was too busy with work. All in all, my business had to go on hold for several months so I could take care of it all.

My uncle died very recently, leaving my elderly aunt on her own. They have no children. She's planning to move near me. Not near my brother, near me. I know why: I am female, I work for myself so can "pick my hours", and as a woman, caring must be my responsibility. I imagine that pretty soon school hours will be spent caring for my aunt, and evenings will be spent caring for my young children. My work will have to go on hold. I do wonder where this will leave me financially in the future.

Greypaw

It's a quite unbelievable assumption, isn't it? Men work? Well so do women! And where are all these men in the evening, or at weekends?

Part of me just thinks we should say no, fuck off, you do it.

But I didn't.

I was originally of the opinion that it was just easier for me to do the bulk of the caring for my mum, because my brother seemed to find it soooo hard. But reached the conclusion that it is actually easier for men to just be selfish. Same old entitled outlook. There's no guilt.

My sister-in-law has spent the best part of two years caring for her mother, who has the kind of dementia that leads to aggression.

My brother is outraged that her brother doesn't help. God, the irony.

He recently had the insight to apologise to me for what he now sees as his crass selfishness when he was 'that brother'. But only because he's seen with his own eyes the emotional toll it has taken on his wife.

This is an issue that infuriates me. I've experienced the social care system first-hand, and appreciate that it is broken, but the subtext of 'domestic care' is almost invariably 'care by women'. Most families are now dual-income; most women now have to (and many, like myself, want to) work. Women remain, in most cases, the primary carer for children. If we're expected to take on the additional burden of elderly care, we risk surrendering a lot of the ground we've gained in recent years in terms of gender equality. Of course, it's generally male politicians who are making such pronouncements, knowing full well that the burden is never likely to fall on them.

Caring for my grandma nearly killed my mother, and that wasn't even full-time, live-in care. My Mum's in her early 70s; my grandmother died last year aged 100. She had severe Alzheimer's, was doubly incontinent and aggressive, and towards the end she hardly slept at all - looking after her was literally a 24-hour task. She spent her final few years in an excellent care home (having been denied full nursing care on a technicality, since her needs were deemed to be primarily mental-health rather than physical-health related), but even so there was a lot of top-up care and a huge amount of admin that was dealt with almost exclusively by my DM. It took a huge toll on her mental and physical health (she's still on anti-depressants) but her notion of 'family duty' meant she felt compelled to take it on.

What about children who, for whatever reason, have a dysfunctional relationship with their parents? What about those (like my own grandmother) who feel that having intimate tasks performed by her own daughter amounted to a total loss of dignity? Or who, like my mother, are fundamentally unsuited to caring and do it only grudgingly, out of duty?

I'm in my mid-30s, with a good career. DP and I are only now considering starting a family. My parents are in their 70s, and live nearby. They're currently in fairly good health, but I'm terrified of one day being expected to assume responsibility for their care. It sounds incredibly callous, as I love my parents, but DP and I have even considered moving further afield so that, in the long term, it can't be automatically assumed that I'll be the main carer. We need to find a solution to the care crisis - I'm more than willing to pay increased tax to fund it - but placing the burden on women will lead to untold misery.

I think we need far more retirement villages for older people to live in thier own much smaller homes.

Care can be given in a smaller proximaty and people can look after and out for each other.

Xenophile is correct, blurred lines around care and nursing homes, with medication and unqualified staffing.

Thing is most people want to stay put for as long as possible, then when they need to go into a home for caring - a care home won't take them as they need nursing care.

If though you go into a care home and detereate, you generally get to stay put and you are not moved out. Thus the blurred lines of care.

The more sheltered and retirement homes & complexes around will benefit as care can be given far easily and economically for a group of people together, reducing the need for people to enter nursing homes

I agree.

My own DM is now very elderly and no doubt I will be the one who becomes responsible for arranging her care, if not directly doing it, despite having 2 elder brothers, one living literally next door to her

TempsPerdu

It's a dreadful situation. Like you, I would be prepared to pay more. My bone of contention is why does it cost so much? Nursing care could legitimately be deemed expensive. But not domestic care.

Despite my own mum's physical and mental decline, I can't see how it could cost £1000 a week. Her needs were few, she ate next to nothing, did not require ongoing medical care, just 'checking'. Any medication was paid for by the NHS. The staff would have realistically only spent a few hours a day with her, if that.

If anyone here can shed light on this, I'm not at all averse to being enlightened.

If the bulk of the money was spent on insurance, taxes, paperwork and bureaucracy - well there's the problem, right there.

And I don't think it is 'callous' to dread having to care for elderly parents. It can be a tremendous strain. The shuttling back and forth between profound love, compassion, irritation, duty, fear, angst, rage and guilt - is shit.

Plus, it's not really something that we can rage about. People (women) do it all the time.

And if any of those fathers, uncles, husbands, brothers and sons could at least lighten the burden, it would be a step in the right direction.

If this chap is suggesting domestic care should fall to relatives in the family, the least he should do is point out that it should be an equal division between the men in the family and the women in the family.

I might feel less depressed / angry / frustrated by the minister's pronouncements if a) he had shown an inkling of awareness that he was proposing something that would overwhelmingly fall to women; and b) as a result of a) he had also said that they were looking at what could be done to alleviate that. Eg allowing women to draw their state pension early if they were providing substantial care for an elderly relative, providing NI credits - as per young children - for those with caring responsibilities who are too young for a pension but unable to work as a result. Something, some gesture at least!

I'm similarly mystified Datun! Anecdotally I've heard it's to do with the fact that many care homes are in large older buildings, which cost a lot to heat and maintain. But that can't be the only thing, especially as in addition to the care home fees we had to pay for all my grandma's 'extras' like shower gel, socks (which were constantly getting lost), non-prescription pharmacy stuff etc. We all know that staff in the caring professions are paid a pittance, but all that money must be going somewhere. My grandma could have lived out her last years at Claridges for considerably less!

Totally agree Olenna, I really don't get this unspoken consensus that women must automatically take on caring roles. Everyone recognises that this is the case but it's just taken as a given - partly it's a lack of recognition from men, but I also think there are too many well-meaning female martyrs out there (my mother probably being one of them) who don't want to kick up a fuss. I'm certainly no more suited to caring than my brother (who has conveniently emigrated to Canada, and has no intention of helping out with such matters in the future!).

Sadly the assumption is that caring is easy and cost-free until it has to be done by someone outside the family.

There's a constant undercurrent in the media and politicians speeches that SAHM are lazy or, at a push, just very lucky to be indulged to spend time with their children. However outsourcing that care costs hundreds, even thousands a month (and of course when governments say they'll provide 30 hours free childcare a week, they conveniently price it at about £2 an hour).

Similarly with caring - my Grandma got a grand total of £62 a week for caring for my severely physically disabled Grandfather who also had dementia. That was for a minimum of 35 hours caring a week.

Not only does this undervalue the work that women are doing, it also makes the physical and mental strain of such work invisible.

Datun

It's claimed that self funders (the ones paying £1000+ a week) are subsiding the local authority/NHS funded residents. Local authorities sometimes pay half the amount a self funder would.

Also most large care home companies are up to their eyes in debt, not necessarily their own but the debt of the group/corporation/whatever that owns them.

Just to add when I say the local authority funds them I mean they fund part. Anybody living in a care home that is LA "funded" will have about 20-30 pounds a week after the deductions for their care.

This is about shifting responsibilities off the state on to individuals, and in a society that has always been unequal that increases the inequality.

It absolutely is.

And on a very basic level, is the individual carer qualified? Do they know CPR? The Heimlich manoeuvre? Nutrician? Can they recognise when a cold is more than a cold, or a leg pain really a clot? When they help the person out of bed are they doing it wrong/lack the strength...thereby hurting the cared for? Will resources be made available to train, or is the carer just out there on their own? Googling things and getting multiple answers? Do they have the necessary equipment/supplies? Do they even know what these are? Are there exercise opportunities for the cared for....mental stimulation?

A strong social system addresses these things.

Also most large care home companies are up to their eyes in debt, not necessarily their own but the debt of the group/corporation/whatever that owns them.

Why are they in debt? Is it just because care is intrinsically expensive? I'm thinking of a family with four children. Many get by on less than £1000 a week. Feeding, washing, cleaning, etc.

I'm not disputing that it is expensive, I'm just wondering how that breaks down. It's hard to google. The only ones I have come across is where they say the paperwork takes at least 20% of the time and only half of it is ever used. Plus there is a lot of duplication and assessments, etc.

make

The social services carers that my mum had were totally unqualified for the job. Whatever training, if any, they had been through was useless. There were often very young, inexperienced. At the worst, they stole from her.

She rarely saw the same person twice, so the first 5 minutes was spent in 'orientation'.

They had 15 minutes for the visit. So get her up, washed and make breakfast. Included in that 15 minutes was the time it took to get to the next person on their list. Consequently, they would often turn up late, or not at all, or two at the same time.

It wasn't their fault though.

Well, I think with this, as with so many things, the Tories are doing better than we are at framing ideas. Here is a video of a mean carer shaking an old person, therefore social care is bad. They show up late and rush off after 15 minutes, therefore social care is broken. A&E is overcrowded...too many immigrants.

These for-profit places may not be part of the solution at all. This home visit system may need overhauling. But what they are doing, and I think they are, is controlling the dialogue. There are other, better ways.

There is certainly a lot of propaganda floating around. People used to have the dole at times of need as of right, not because they were scrounging. The public sector used to be seen as the most efficient way of caring for everyone, not an inefficient wasteful excess. All to enable a culture of greed and inequality.

It needs to be seen as manipulative propaganda for a start I think, not just 'framing ideas' and pr.

I didn't mean to sound sneery btw. Things are getting into a seriously bad state and I think we need a complete shift away from manipulating perceptions back to substance.