Further to my own, limited, experience and years of participating in this forum, I'd make the following points.
1. It's a 2-tier system - self funders are treated differently to people who would/will be council funded. This seems wrong.
2. There's a general lack of continuity and poor communication. Emails go unanswered, the promised telephone callbacks never happen.
3. When it comes to moving someone to a care home, the system becomes very adversarial. Family wish their loved one to move to a care home for their own safety or due to carer exhaustion. Social Services often refuse and would rather wait till their maximum of '4 care visits per day' at home has been tried and failed. In other words, family have to wait for a crisis, often resulting in harm to the person with dementia. (Not to mention their exhausted family.) Is it any wonder it comes across as putting budgets before the wellbeing of the person with dementia?
4. The same often applies to a DoLS assessment. My own experience of this was extremely bad. To be told I couldn't be my mother's RPR because I wanted her to stay in the care home I'd found for her (she clearly needed 24/7 care for the rest of her life) but mum - apparently - wanted to go 'home' was simply ridiculous. Perhaps someone can tell me why a DoLS SW will believe every word a person with dementia says ('I do everything for myself, I don't need any help,' etc.) and completely disregard everything they are told by a person (e.g. me) who knows that person better than anyone?
5. Perhaps you can also explain to me why a social worker has the ultimate say over mental capacity and can go against the expressed opinions of medical consultants? The opinions of medically-untrained social workers are not considered to trump medics with any other disease. (And rightly so!)
6. Social Services need to stop fighting with the NHS over who pays for care.
