A duty of care

                                          "I'm not getting old, I'm out living my warranty" 

 

I had a very interesting discussion with an old lady who had locked herself in her house. I asked her how she had managed this and she replied that she’d left her key in the butter.

It wasn’t the answer I was expecting. 

Somebody at the guild had told her that using butter on a key stops the locks from freezing as WD40 turns to ice if the temperature goes below zero. She had to phone a neighbour to come to her rescue and the neighbour pointed out that they use WD40 in the artic and that west of Scotland winters, although soul crushing and dark, they are wet rather than particularly cold. 

                        " Yesterday I moved the fastest I've moved in years, I fell down the stairs."

Although, as I write this another Scandinavian snow storm is heading our way. Two flakes of snow constitute a whiteout and Scotland closes. 

Which brings me to the topic of the blog which is the cultural treatment of old people. A few of my Muslim friends live in multi-generational houses and their oldies are catered for 24/7. There’s a rolling situation of the 'cared for' becoming 'the carers' then back to the 'cared for' as the years pass. 

Over Xmas we saw some family members who had not seen their grand parents for a year which in my book would warrant a kick up the backside or disinheritance. My grandmother lived to be 106 and stayed in her own home until she was 104. It was the deterioration of her eyesight that finally moved her in to a care home where she had a visitor every day.  Of her three children, one ( my mum)  did all the visiting. My sister and I did the other days. The other members of the family turned up at the funeral.

                      " Don't worry about getting old. You'll still do daft stuff, but a lot slower."

In the UK all care homes are private and the government gives an allowance per person based upon their financial circumstances. So, to take a rule of thumb a care home can be £800 per week. The government will give a weekly allowance that bridges the gap between the cost and the person's contribution. The person's contribution includes their state pension, any private pension, their carers allowance which then goes to care home, plus a top up from the person's bank account. If the person is single and is leaving a house, then the house can be sold in that feeds in to the person's private contribution but the state contribution is the same.

There is a care allowance that an elderly person can get for them to organise care at home. This switches to help cover the care home cost if needed. And two of my Muslim friends are totally bemused by this. And they are right, there is a grey area of being the full time paid carer for your own mother. 

The system is meant to be used for care companies – usually organised by social work. 

My friend has carers in 4 times a day. They’ve had a catastrophic stroke and their allowance is two people 4 times per day for showering and personal care. His wife can do meals etc but can’t use the hoist to get him off the bed on to the wheelchair. The allowance also includes a two hour companion visit per week to allow the wife to go out and do shopping etc. He had his stroke four years ago and all his carers were from, what used to be, the Eastern Bloc countries. Now they are all from Nigeria, so he's enjoying the culture he's experiencing now. He never had a passport in his life.

Everybody would agree that these payments are a good idea, it keeps people out of hospital, they get to watch their own tv shows, they stay in their own home. There are instances of abuse of course. One picked up by the DWP was where the son was the carer for the mother, and the mother was the carer for the son. One lived in Glasgow and the other was 300 miles away in Liverpool.

A friend of mine assessed a bed ridden person for carers allowance. After the visit she was outside, typing up the notes when the bed ridden person came out their front door, armed with their Walmart bags and trotted down the path to do the shopping.

The grey area exists when an adult child stops work to look after a senior relative. I can see that getting paid to do that cab make sense. The state would be paying carers to do it, so why not pay a relative. Though can any one human being  do the 24/7 care properly, is another question.

Then there's the question of simply looking after a relative who is long term poorly. But wanting paid to do it. And if there's no payment, they simply will not do it.

I guess there's a sliding scale of  dooable, and then impossible once things get to a certain stage  and then, there has to be paid 24/7 care.

The MIL type person, Moira, is in a care home. It's one of the cheaper ones, but very close to the family home. For the care she gets, the personal contribution is excellent value. It was the same with the care home my Dad was in.  They get looked after, fed and watered and we get to take them out down to the cafe or for a walk through the park. We have time, which is best thing of all.

Years ago, the elderly would be parked in the corner of the family house and would be part of everything but with good health and longer life expectancy, often it's just not practical or advisable to provide that kind of care.

Obviously, people's taste differ. We have a carehome here that's over £3k a week. It has its own cinema. But once the money runs out, the poor person is out on their ear. Many  calculations are made re how many weeks of care are  affordable if the persons house is sold. The answer is not very much.

Today I'm having a retirement planning meeting, then taking my mother for a coffee. She's 87. Still gets on the bus, still tells me to stop swearing.