My 82 year old widowed father has vascular dementia, he was diagnosed two months ago after a frustrating & upsetting year. He lives on his own & I work 30 hours a week & need to to pay my mortgage.
At present I do my Dad's shopping, manage his money, appointments, change his bed, do his clothes washing & tidying up. He has got much worse lately and the time has come to get help in, initially for 1 hour day at lunchtime. This is mainly to hopefully cajole him into eating a hot meal at lunchtime, generally check he is okay & perhaps put some washing in/do a bit of ironing for him.
Our social worker has taken 6 months sabbatical to finish her degree, no great loss there, I was not impressed & common sense didn't seem to be one of her strong points. My Dad will be self funding so I seem to be on my own with this.
He will have forgotten by now that he agreed to have someone come in. I will have to tell him again & tell him he must pay for it. Attendance Allowance claim is being dealt with & I had a phone call on Monday to say that someone will set up an appointment with me about me being a trustee for his allowance, so looks like he will be getting it, although they wouldn't tell me anything. EPA is lodged with the solicitors but he has put a clause in to say when his GP decides he is not capable so it is not registered yet but he has added me to his current bank account.
There are about 5 home care suppliers in our town. Two I have already been told are not very good, especially the one that Social Services themselves would have put in place if my Dad had been eligible for funding! Are there any reports on these care services, how do I monitor what has happened while I am at work & how on earth do I pick a good one? Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks
At present I do my Dad's shopping, manage his money, appointments, change his bed, do his clothes washing & tidying up. He has got much worse lately and the time has come to get help in, initially for 1 hour day at lunchtime. This is mainly to hopefully cajole him into eating a hot meal at lunchtime, generally check he is okay & perhaps put some washing in/do a bit of ironing for him.
Our social worker has taken 6 months sabbatical to finish her degree, no great loss there, I was not impressed & common sense didn't seem to be one of her strong points. My Dad will be self funding so I seem to be on my own with this.
He will have forgotten by now that he agreed to have someone come in. I will have to tell him again & tell him he must pay for it. Attendance Allowance claim is being dealt with & I had a phone call on Monday to say that someone will set up an appointment with me about me being a trustee for his allowance, so looks like he will be getting it, although they wouldn't tell me anything. EPA is lodged with the solicitors but he has put a clause in to say when his GP decides he is not capable so it is not registered yet but he has added me to his current bank account.
There are about 5 home care suppliers in our town. Two I have already been told are not very good, especially the one that Social Services themselves would have put in place if my Dad had been eligible for funding! Are there any reports on these care services, how do I monitor what has happened while I am at work & how on earth do I pick a good one? Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks