Leaving hospital care home assessment

[sue31]

Mum has just spent 3 weeks in hospital after a minor fall - fortunately no broken bones.
Due to her confusion etc she was kept in - spent 3 nights in a corridor & many too many issues raised to go into here.
I got a call today to say she is going to be discharged into a local care home for a needs assessment - the home has a poor CQC rating so I’m obviously not happy. Neither am I that they are discharging her with increasing back pain that they constantly refuse to xray her for.
Had a bit of a row over that with the ward Dr on phone today about it. Said I would hold him & his consultant personally responsible if found to be something they should have treated.

The discharge lady that called was lovely but I’m a bit confused myself. She said it would be for a couple of weeks, doing a care assessment, a CHC assessment then a financial assessment.

I’m guessing that they will say no to CHC funding, & will go for a financial assessment & her being self funding.

Anyone else been in this situation? Do you have to pay for the time it takes to complete these checks? If so can I insist they find somewhere else to do them?

 

[try again]

In my area, you get up to 6 weeks paid for by the NHS.
My mum was discharged to a filthy care home. Luckily the occupational therapist and district nurse went out to her within a couple of days of discharge and when talking to them we all stuck together and managed to get an assessment within a couple of weeks.
Social services deemed mum unable to go home which was a relief to me as we had only been waiting for the crisis to occur .
Luckily, I already had a care home in my mind so we managed to get her moved on quickly.

Do you feel she should go back home? If not It might be worth looking around at care homes just in case .

As far as cqc ratings, you can't really just go on them especially as a lot of them are quite old now due to COVID. The bad home mum was sent to had a rating of good. The lovely home we sent her to was requires improvement, this year they got a good having been assessed in September.

Have you actually visited the home to see what you think. You can do so and I believe you can refuse to let her go there if you really don't like it.

I put in a formal complaint to the cqc about the home she was discharged to, complained to the hospital that sent her there. I was told recently they were improving but had a long way to go .

 

[sue31]

In my area, you get up to 6 weeks paid for by the NHS.
My mum was discharged to a filthy care home. Luckily the occupational therapist and district nurse went out to her within a couple of days of discharge and when talking to them we all stuck together and managed to get an assessment within a couple of weeks.
Social services deemed mum unable to go home which was a relief to me as we had only been waiting for the crisis to occur .
Luckily, I already had a care home in my mind so we managed to get her moved on quickly.

Do you feel she should go back home? If not It might be worth looking around at care homes just in case .

As far as cqc ratings, you can't really just go on them especially as a lot of them are quite old now due to COVID. The bad home mum was sent to had a rating of good. The lovely home we sent her to was requires improvement, this year they got a good having been assessed in September.

Have you actually visited the home to see what you think. You can do so and I believe you can refuse to let her go there if you really don't like it.

I put in a formal complaint to the cqc about the home she was discharged to, complained to the hospital that sent her there. I was told recently they were improving but had a long way to go .

It’s been a hard decision but home care has not worked for us, we have spent thousands over 3 years & she makes them sit in a chair, won’t let them touch anything or assist at all. They can’t force her to change, wash, eat. The house is wrecked too. According to mum everything is fine & ‘normal’. I wish it was!!

When carers were first put in place we were told up to six weeks free, they sourced them (I soon changed them tho) we only got a week free, SS told them we were self funding so they billed us.!


The fall has been the final straw, and to be honest it was a massive help in getting her out of the house, she’d refused to leave for 11 months, she can’t and won’t be returning home I have made that very clear.

I had already made enquires with a few homes locally that have been recommended by friends. Only 2 have vacancies at the moment, one of them wouldn’t take her as she’s too advanced & a third has a waiting list but have said they will assess her asap to go on the list. Hopefully by the time they sort it they will have a space for her as that’s my top pick.
Think my concern is mainly the CQC rating was only done in Oct 2023 & states it’s the third time it needed improvements.
She absolutely hates the hospital, it is REALLY an awful ward, I’m just hoping the move will be better than that - I find it hard to believe it could be worse but we shall see. If it is bad I won’t have any hestitation in kicking up a fuss to get her moved.

 

[try again]

Sounds as though you are organised. Have you read the full cqc report? Sometimes the area that require improvement don't impact too much on the care.

If there's time go visit it .

If she is self funding and you have poa and a care home lined up, why not just asked for transfer to there. You can tell her she's in there to recouperate for a couple of weeks while you get the assessment/ dols sorted.
A move will be disruptive to her either way.

 

[sue31]

So Mum finally got admitted to the assessment care home Tuesday after 3 weeks in an absolute hell hole of a ward. It took that long for them to actually do a X-ray that finally confirmed her pain was real & I wasn’t a demanding drama queen - she has a 7cm calcified aortic aneurysm in her abdomen that was causing the back pain!
Massive complaint now in the hands of the PALs team.
I was told on discharge that in 7 - 10 days someone would be in touch to do a Chc assessment.
Home seems ok, room is clean but strong urine smell along the corridor on the floor she’s on tho - we went in the night she arrived to drop some personal bits off & she was absolutely exhausted, confused but surprisingly calm (maybe because she was so tired)
Not been back in due to giving her some time to settle as advised by the home & posters on here.
Yesterday I had a phone call to say a Chc assessment was going to be done by teams, never had any dealings with the person scheduling this and the home can’t tell me who from the home will be joining. I will of course be logging on to it. They have sent me a through a blank form but looking at it I have a feeling that no one else that will be at this ‘virtual teams meeting’ will have enough time or experience with my mother to answer these questions accurately - or believe me if challenged.

Is 6 days enough for them to gather enough information? They have a GP that visits once a week but they have not seen her yet as last weeks visit was before mum went in.

I’m going in tomorrow for a few hours to try & find out what’s been going on.

So confused & apprehensive as to what will be happening next.