Hi, I'm Brenda. I live in Switzerland but have one brother who lives in Surrey.
Mum is not doing well (she lives on her own and refuses any kind of help). We can no longer have her assessed at the memory clinic and by the doc. as she refuses to go.
The time will come when my brother and I will have to place her in a care home.
My question is as in the title. I'm trying my best to take some of the workload off my brother but not having lived in England since I was 20 I really don't know how things work in England. I hope I'm on the right forum here - sorry if I'm not.
Hi, and yes, you are on the right forum!
In answer to your question, I think it depends on your circumstances. As far as I know, if she would be 'self-funding' (using her own assets to pay for the care home placement), she would be able to go anywhere she wanted - subject to that particular care home assessing her as suitable.
However, it may be different if her assets are not sufficient for this and she has to be partly funded by social services, or if indeed her health needs were eventually deemed high enough to be fully funded by NHS Continuing Health Care (CHC), which is very hard to qualify for.
My sister was funded by social services in a different London borough (the other side of the city) from where she originally lived - partly because we could not agree on a suitable Nursing Home in that area, and partly because of ease of visiting. However, I don't know if that situation was very unusual. It was also a few years ago.
Re CHC, there is currently another thread by someone whose mother gets this in a care home in a different county from the CCG who is funding her, and now has to be moved back into that county so that they can more easily check on her. That might be the general rule now, I don't know.
You say that this decision may be some time off, so I'm assuming her AD is not too bad at the moment, but it is never too early to start planning ahead, not least because the disease
can progress quite suddenly. You also say that she refuses to go to the memory clinic, which makes me think that she might well be reluctant to go into a CH
anywhere - have you brought this up with her?
Hopefully other people will know more about the current rules and regulations regarding choice of location and will be along to advise you.