Taking mum out of care home

[Sea]

Can i take my mum out of her care home and look after her myself at my home?

[jenniferpa]

Hi Sea and welcome to Talking Point.

It's not an easy question to answer. Why was she placed in the home in the first place? Do you have any family members who might object? Could you really cope with the 24/7 care required? What stage is your mum at? Finally, I suppose the big question is why do you want to move your mother?

[Sea]

Mum was in a care home for 3 years.she recently had a fall and broke her arm.care home staff did not seek medical advice until 12 hours later and mum ended up in hospital for 2 months.i told social services that i intended to take her home and care for her myself.in the meantime a transitional bed was found for her while i arranged to move home to accomodate her and i gave up my job.now i am finding it difficult to bring her home and it feels like social services are ignoring me.

[Sea]

There are no family members who will object .

[sistermillicent]

It is not always possible to do this but Social Services should be able to tell you whether or not it is actually a possibility.

[NeverGiveUp]

Think carefully about this.

Dad & I look after mum at home, last year she went into hospital and some terrible things happened to her, one night her arm was broken and left unsupported for nearly 24 hours without even monitoring pain control, we discovered her hunched in a chair hugging a swollen blackened hand which was at an angle which clearly showed the arm was broken. No-one told us. Then her legs were injured a couple of nights later, no witnesses apparently. We had to find the injuries for ourselves. We got her out of hospital with the arm in plaster and only found out part of what happened by buying the local paper and finding that a brave person had to the story to a reporter.

There are several problems to deal with, firstly, the logistics of the injury, the dementia mind sees it as a form of restraint. Then there is the problem of how much use there is to the arm, we were told to expect her to mostly lose the use of the arm and no physio was provided. We worked with mum and she can more or less eat on her own but she does have problems. We had to get her off the antipsychotics that were given to her by the hospital.

The next problem is flashbacks, I don't know the circumstances of your mum's injuries but, nearly a year later, things are said which might well relate to what happened. I can tell you it is Hell to hear all this.

Dad & I are pretty much prisoners in our own home looking after mum, I had to give up all hopes of work some years ago. It isn't nice. I would take a guess that my life expectancy has been severely reduced, my back is feeling the strain of having to keep lifting mum, I have other physical problems caused by this, additionally I now have other serious health problems which are most likely as a result of the situation. Many nights I have to sleep on the floor to be near mum, I get by on an hours sleep for days on end, 4 or 5 hours is the norm, rarely more. We haven't noticed people lining up outside the door offering to help.

SS have not been of any help to us, the file contents have added to our worries. The situation has become surreal.

I am sorry if my words add to the worry for you, but I urge you to think carefully. Are you willing to sacrifice your health. In retrospect I think i would have still followed this pathway if I had known what was to happened, I would have done some things differently.

Hopefully you will not experience what we have.