yourcarehome.co.uk blog

From Michael Caine to The Wilderness

The subjects of care homes and of dementia have been in the news a lot recently, but they are now being taken up by other areas of the media... 

In Michael Caine's new film, "Is Anybody There?", he plays a resident in a care home who befriends the manager's young son.  It opens in the UK on the 1st May 2009.

Becca Stevenson, whose dad John has Alzheimer's, is starring in a play about dementia called "For Once I Was" at the Tristan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden, London.  The play centres on the the experience of younger people with dementia and runs until May 2nd 2009.

Samantha Harvey's debut novel, The Wilderness, has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. The Wilderness focuses on Jake, a man in his 60s with Alzheimer's, desperately trying to hold on to his identity.

Samantha's website describes the book as follows:

Jake Jameson is a sixty-five-year-old architect who is on the cusp of retirement. One evening he’s sitting alone in the office, staring down at an architectural drawing. He can’t quite figure out what he’s supposed to do with it. Suddenly he remembers a word, one for which he has been trying for days to recall; entropy - for him the single most interesting theory that exists, a theory that says everything loses, rather than gains, order.

This idea underlies this riveting tale of a man whose memories are slowly eroding. As Alzheimer’s begins to wear away his sense of identity, Jake builds stories around his life that inform his feelings of blame and responsibility - only to have the stories disintegrate faster than he can capture them. As the plot keeps shifting and the facts unravel, little mysteries start to form: What was the problem with the missing letter “e”? What was behind the mythologies that his Jewish mother told him as a child? Where is his daughter Alice? What happened to her? Eventually we realise that even Jake’s clearest memories may not be true. He is the flawed witness to his own past, the ultimate unreliable narrator. Yet in the end we are left with a clear and moving portrait not only of a sympathetic man but also of a heartrending disease as seen from the inside out.

I've just started reading it, but if there are any readers out there who have finished it, why not e-mail info@yourcarehome.co.uk with a review?

Choosing Dad’s new home

The most useful important thing you need to select a care home is a sense of smell. If you don’t happen to possess one, I recommend that you find someone who does.

I had to act quickly to find a home for my Dad. He was in hospital and every time I visited him, the senior nurse collared me to ask what my plans were, as they desperately needed the bed.

So I sat down with a map and a list of care homes provided by the local authority.  My first reaction was surprise that there were so many within a short distance of my home. Then I started to visit them.

 I shall never forget the first home on my list. From the outside, it looked like a conventional family home.  Then I saw, hidden from the road, a large 70s flat roofed extension, like a temporary office building. It looked ready for demolition.  Inside was worse.  A dozen elderly people in varying stages of decay sat facing each other in a long, narrow room.  The furniture –  a clutter of dreadful, wing back armchairs - looked like it had been salvaged from a skip. Some of the residents were remarkably cheerful and that depressed me even more; the ability of their generation to put up with anything.  It was like stepping into a documentary about Eastern Europe in the communist era. I asked to see the bathroom and nearly gagged at the smell of blocked drains.  For this they wanted £650 per week! 

 Then I visited some other nearby homes that although modern and clean, were eye-wateringly expensive.  I went back to my list and adjusted my compasses to look at care homes within a 5 mile radius from my home.  This added a large number of new options. When I got on the phone, the list quickly reduced to a handful. Some were nursing homes rather than care homes, some were single sex or only took referrals through a charitable trust.  More than one subjected me over the phone to an interrogation about my Dad’s level of confusion, because they were reluctant to accept any new residents with any dementia problems, due to the increased burden of care.  I had visions of Dad being kicked out for becoming too needy.  At the other extreme, one very upmarket home referred me to their ‘business development manager’, who continued to hassle me with phone calls for three months after.

 I quickly developed a preference for larger homes run by trusts with a strong emphasis on values, rather than smaller, private homes or those run on a purely commercial basis.

 I visited several more homes, often taking my daughter with me, whose sense of smell is acute.  In almost every home, there would be some pathetic lady who was convinced that I was her son and some were very insistent in their delusion.

 In the end, I selected one of the nearby homes, whose charges I initially thought were eye-watering. The home is quite large – around 60 beds, but they are organised into smaller units, with separate lounge and dining facilities, so there is still a local feel on each floor. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but I am convinced that you need scale to get a balance of value for money with an acceptable standard of care.

Six months on, I remain happy with my choice and the costs, although high, no longer seems like too bad value for money.

 

You can read in more detail about my experiences on my blog www.declineandfalls.com

The Budget - how does it help you?

So, I sat down last night to watch the budget, ready to take notes about how much extra was going to be put into our desperately underfunded social care system....and I waited....and waited....and waited.....

Was I naive?  Maybe...I know there is a recession on, but with the government green paper on social funding out any day soon, I had hoped to be busy writing on how the changes would affect carers and those needing care.  Not to be....

Ok, so what help do the elderly get? 

HOW DOES THE BUDGET AFFECT YOU?

Winter fuel allowance - A one-off increase in the Winter Fuel Allowance will be maintained for another year – worth £250 for over 60s and £400 for the over 80's.  

Pension Credit - Currently, the first £6000 of a pensioner's savings are excluded from the assessment of their entitlement to pension credit, housing benefit and council tax benefit.  From the autumn, this cut off point will rise to £10,000, benefitting about 540,000 by approx £4 per week.

ISA savings - Starting immediately, the tax-free Isa savings allowance for the over 50's will rise from £7,200 to £10,200.

Pension -  The state pension would continue to rise, but this was already guaranteed. However, it is almost certain that pensioners will receive the basic minimum 2.5 per cent rise, meaning an increase of just £2.40 to £97.65. Millions of older women will get just £1.45 more.

Age Concern and Help The Aged have commented 

 "the failure to provide emergency funding for our creaking social care system will exacerbate the current crisis. In an era of difficult financial choices, ministers must not use the recession as an excuse to starve the care system of funds it urgently needs or be distracted from much needed long-term reform."

The National Pensioners Convention have commented 

 "It's clear that the message to pensioners from today's Budget is stop counting your savings, don't turn up your heating, and if you make it to next April, make sure you don't spend your extra £2.40 all at once."

BBC Radio Wiltshire interviews yourcarehome.co.uk!

Last week, BBC Radio Wiltshire invited www.yourcarehome.co.uk to talk about the difficulties involved with finding a good care home and why our website is so important for people looking for a home.

To listen to the interview, click the "play" arrow (the one pointing to the right)...

What are your thoughts?  Let us know what you think about finding a care home, or about our website by leaving a comment below or sending us an email at info@yourcarehome.co.uk....

yourcarehome hits the airwaves!

Last Thursday (9th April), to tie in with the Panorama programme, yourcarehome.co.uk was asked to appear on BBC Wiltshire radio to discuss care homes and why the process of finding a care home is so difficult.

We've received some really positive feedback as a result and we'll make the podcast available as soon as we can!

The Care in the Home Panorama Special

No doubt many of you saw or heard about the Care in the Home Panorama programme last Thursday (9th April) - The investigation, which included undercover filming of three homecare providers, showed hard-hitting evidence of neglect and a general overwhelming lack of care provided by care agencies looking after the elderly in their own home.

The programme showed carers rushing between appointments, with some being missed entirely; it showed lack of training given to carers, out-of-date or missing care plans; and a shocking lack of dignity given to the elderly clients due to impossible schedules for the minimum-waged carers.

In short, it showed care companies short-changing the elderly who rely on home visits for their basic care.

Ok, so this time, the programme was about care in the home, not care in a care home, but the overall issues remain the same - councils and private care companies cutting costs at the expense of care quality, and low pay for care workers.  With the concept of personal care budgets high on the agenda, will care companies be battling to give the highest service or battling to make the highest profit?  And will individual care users be able to afford to shop around?

Goodbye CSCI, the new Care Home regulator has arrived

April 01 2009 saw the end of CSCI, the Commission for Social Care Inspection as it merged with the NHS Healthcare commission and a third body involving detentions under the Mental Health Act.  

The new Care Quality Commission (CQC), headed by Baroness Young, has already released it's first report about how the credit crunch could hit the elderly through care homes being forced to make cuts in care levels due to lack of government funding.

Joan Bakewell, a pioneer of rights for the elderly comments in The Times on this report and is cynical about the real powers of the CQC, fearing that "thorough and sympathetic reports will be delivered and then left to moulder on government shelves."

The Guardian worries that mergers of this kind can be difficult with in-fighting and a mass of new responsibilities leading to a lack of focus on the real issues, but ends on a hopeful note emphasising that the need for this merger is very real, with too many elderly falling through the current gap between the NHS and social care.

More information about the CQC and how they will be monitoring quality in Care Homes is available at their website.