I guess mine must be one of the certain families. I've outlined elsewhere what happened in my mum's case, and I'll just briefly say again what happened, because I think some aspects of what happened are, unfortunately, not uncommon.
She was whizzed to hospital for chest pains in March last year. The chest pains turned out to be no more than constipation. The 'home' refused to take her back, saying they couldn't cope with her nursing needs. At that time she was ambulant, with minimal assistance but had had a couple of UTI's which had set her back a little.
Whilst she was in hospital, a multi disciplinary assessment said she had no nursing needs. As far as we were concerned the home had made her 'homeless' whilst she was in hospital. I can't think of any other way of describing this except as an eviction. We searched high and low for alternative care and couldn't find any. We then reluctantly reverted to the 'home' and showed them the multidisciplinary assessment, which also said that she had been admitted with malnutrition and dehydration. Out of embarrassment and in the face of the professionals opinions on the multidisciplinary assessment, they accepted her to an EMI residential wing.
They again, after about a month sent her to hospital for exactly the same scenario but took her back when they realised that the hospital was satisfied she didn't need admission.
After a few weeks, they called a multidisciplinary meeting of their own devising and informed us of the outcome. Once again they deemed her to need nursing care, mainly because a palliative care nurse had agreed to recommend oxygen for her and the home was unable to administer this. They did have a 'wellness nurse' covering the whole complex, but they would not allow her to administer the oxygen, or her deputies, because they did not attend the premises 24/7. The oxygen sat in the administrator's office whilst the home made up its mind whether or not they could let my mother have it. (The palliative care service was withdrawn this year as they say my mother is not terminal. Even now, with my mother in a nursing home, she has never received oxygen.)
Having made up their minds that they couldn't provide nursing for my mother, ( which no one had been asking them to do; a District Nurse visited to carry out any minor 'nursing' interventions such as changing small dressings on the occasions when my mother's legs were damaged during handling), they then issued us with a letter giving us 30 days notice of their intention to claim back my mother's room. I don't know what else one would call this except eviction.
My mother was receiving minimal nursing attention (which was anyway provided by the DN), was reasonably mobile and was physically no worse than several other residents whom (a local PCT assessor assured us) the home had managed to accommodate. The home trumped up a pretext to get rid of my mother, mainly because I was too vigilant in trying to protect her interests and was too much of a liability. I spent a lot of time at the home trying to give my mother company and I saw a fair bit more than the home was comfortable with. I had alerted the manager, before they decided to oust my mum, that I had seen a member of staff shout at a youngish resident with dementia and pull her roughly from her chair. As I was the only witness to this, they concluded that they could do no more than send the worker to another floor pending investigation and the worker was subsequently allowed back onto the floor where my mother was living. I asked if this worker could please not attend my mother.
My mother had been living under their roof(s) for almost six years when these events took place.
I think it is unwise to assume that people cannot be evicted without the agreement of families. There are different ways of achieving the same end as an eviction and by and large it is the issue of whether the home can meet a person's needs or not which will, I think, be used as the reason for moving someone. Whether the assessment of need is genuine, or just a matter of convenience is where the relatives have to be careful. That and opening their mouths too often.
Finally, I'd like to say that I have tried to share, on this site, the really upsetting things that have happened to my mother, partly for my own sake but partly also for the benefit of other families. No one has to believe what I have written if they don't want to, but I have done my best to set things out as they occurred in the hope that families will realise what happened to just one eldelrly lady with a diagnosis of AD. I don't think I have anything more to add and I can't actually afford to keep posting here because the site is a little bit addictive and I am spending too much time for the limits allowed by my ISP of internet access, so I am going to stop visiting the site. I would like to thank Sylvia, Hazel, Cate, Margarita, Nell and Sue38 in particular for all their generous support and wish everyone who posts here the very best of luck in looking after the interests of their loved ones. With love, Deborah