Hello, what a nightmare for all concerned.
Your dad is entitled to have his care needs assessed by the process of a Community Care Assessment and also an NHS Continuing Care assessment. At some stage, someone must have determined that he had nursing needs, hence the removal to a nursing home, but it is meant to be done, (any assessing), in close consultation with the relatives.
In the areas where my relative lives, the main criterion for admission to a Nursing Home, is mobility. Does the patient need hoisting, use a wheelchair, require a high level of personal support? So you could have a person with quite challenging behaviour who nevertheless is deemed to be suitable for residential care rather than nursing, if they are able to walk more or less unassisted.
There are supposed to be nationwide criteria being developed for deciding who is eligible to long term NHS funded continuing care. I do not know what stage this process has reached. The last I knew, the whole exercise was 'out for consultation'.
To the best of my knowledge, health authorities are still deciding their own 'eligibility criteria' or rather, working towards a model that is the same across the country butpossibly with some local variations. My advice is that you should find out the name of your local Primary Care Trust (PCT): (it's just a fairly recent name for an old concept: a sort of health authority). When you have tracked down which is the responsible PCT for your dad, you should write to the Chief Executive, and ask urgently, for a copy of their local Continuing Care Eligibility Criteria which will set out how it is decided to award long term NHS funded care, and how it is decided that , if the fully funded care is not thought appropriate, the relevant 'banding' of NHS subsidy is decided.
Check out the two factsheets below from the main AS website.
http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/Caring..._and_nursing_care/info_nursingassessments.htm
http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/After_diagnosis/Getting_support/info_communityassessment.htm
Each decision can be questioned and appealed against but it helps if you know what rules are being used to determine the decision, hence the importance of seeing the Contiuing Care Eligibility Criteria. I know it's a bit of a mouthful, but never mind. It contains the rationale for any decision to award NHS nursing care and it will also tell you how to appeal and who the relevant decision makers are. In my mum's district there was a person called a ' Continuing Care Assessor Nurse' who seemed to wield a lot of clout. Ask if such a person exists in your relative's area and contact her or him urgently to ask what is going on.
You need to ask some questions, as to how this transfer took place, and why you were not involved.
Health care is supposed to be provided free, so in a residential home, if a resident has particular reasonably manageable health needs, the residential home will ask local NHS community services, such as District Nurses, OTs and physios to come in and give their services within the home on a 'visiting' basis. The point at which a residential home deems that it cannot meet all the needs of a resident even
with NHS community services input is the point where they will start trying to move the resident on. What is needed is a system whereby elderly people can feel secure in a home which will meet all their needs for the rest of their life, and many homes are beginning to have two levels of care and two types of registration: residential and nursing to make any move less traumatic. If your dad is deemed suitable for a residential placement, then you have to be aware that it won't always be his final home. he may have to move on. I hope I'm not stating the b. obvious here; I'm just trying to think through the different strands of your dilemma.
The important thing is that your dad gets the right type of care first so that is why it's important that the proper assessments take place and that you find a way to be present to influence the process. Argue about the funding later, has been my motto. The assessment process should determine whether your dad is OK for a residential home or a nursing home and whether or not that home is a general care home/nursing home, or an EMI version.
Have you been able to look at any care/nursing home local to your dad? Has anyone given you a list to think about? They usually do this at the end of an assessment, after it has been decided what sort of home the person is deemed suitable for.
Good luck