yourcarehome.co.uk blog

Coming up this week on radio and TV ...

Two things to look out for on the television and radio this week...

Thursday 20 Jan - Radio 4 afternoon play, " Notes to Self" ... Doreen has been in a care home for two years. Her son Robert visits but finds it hard to have a meaningful relationship with his mother, unlike his partner Karen. A performance at the home reveals music to have a powerful effect on Doreen. Can it offer an opportunity for Robert to make a new connection with her? A drama about Alzheimer's disease based on real experiences and interwoven with recordings of music sessions carried out in care homes and day centres.

Friday 21st Jan - BBC Two - Can't Take it with You ... Sir Gerry Robinson helps two families torn over what to write in their wills, exploring favouritism and the effect that can have on tearing families apart.

Bed blocking - yet another indication of the failing care system

There's a lot in the media about bed blocking at the moment, with the re-emerging issue of the elderly not being discharged from hospital when ready due to shortage of appropriate follow-on care services.

Between 2000 and 2004, the UK introduced intermediary care services, specifically aimed at providing the care needed to support elderly patients being discharged from hospital.  The local health services worked in partnership with the care services and as a result, over a million acute hospital beds were freed.  More importantly, it meant elderly patients were not stuck in hospital wards, where their risk of exposure to life threatening infections was massively increased, their confidence to be able to cope at home was reduced and their likelihood of ending up in a care home more probable.

So what went wrong?  Why the re-emergence of bed blocking?  Put simply, lack of promised funds and failure to continue the investment.  Other spending priorities emerged and spending cuts needed to be found, especially at local levels.  Social Services have had to redefine people's eligibility to qualify for care services, leaving many elderly ready to leave hospital, unable to care for themselves at home, but not qualifying for any social care.

So spending cuts have resulted in bed blocking costing the NHS millions of pounds a year, putting the elderly at risk and forcing more acute patients to have to wait for treatment.  But the larger problem seems to be the lack of integration of the budgets and management of the health services, the social services and the care system as a whole.  The real urgency for a major overhaul of the way we care for the elderly is escalating...

Read more about the issue of bed blocking in yourcarehome news...

A dementia ward - tough to see, with lessons to learn

In December, The Guardian published a set of photographs by Maja Daniels depicting life inside a dementia ward.  The pictures are accompanied by thoughts, feelings and recollections by Andrea Gillies, who has written extensively about caring for her mother-in-law who had Alzheimer's.  The photographs and comments alongside are pretty hard hitting and hard to look at, even remembering that these are pictures of a ward, not a care home.

However, Andrea's final comments suggest that there is plenty to learn from these pictures - essentially, the need for purpose-built dementia residences (more like hotels than hospitals), art and music therapy, dedicated and imaginative staff, and a network of these residences so that they can be accessed by all.

Andrea admits that the spend for this "vision" would be enormous, but she argues that with the rapidly escalating numbers of those with Alzheimer's and dementia, what is the cost we pay for not spending?

 

The Guardian's gallery, featuring Maja Daniels and Andrea Gillies