Lost money

[Rosie56]

My mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer's on 10 April after months of confusion and bad memory which was initially put down to depression.

I live quite a long way from her and I have one sibling who did nothing for years, but is gradually starting to help, though not exactly putting his back into it. I can't go back to where Mum is, and she refuses to come here, so I've spent a lot of time setting up support for her to stay at home as she wants to. She now has a support worker, social worker, nurses, day care for one day a week (soon to be increased) and a carer who comes in every day to help her shop and to prepare some food. The carer will soon be coming in more often to make sure she eats later in the day.

Since last week the carer has been taking her to collect her pension before going shopping with her. I know that the carer collected a month's worth of pension the first time she did this, because the caring agency informed me, and I think she's probably collected more this week. It might be as much as a month's worth each time, because Mum's pension is in serious backlog. She never goes to collect it by herself and when I was last with her there the post office told me there was a lot still waiting to be drawn - we couldn't get it all because there's a limit on how much the post office can pay in one go.

Mum squirrels the money away in silly places and when I am with her, I dig it all out and put it into the bank to pay her direct debits for utilities, care, etc, leaving her some cash for her shopping.

This week, however, I'm concerned because Mum doesn't seem able to find her pension money at all, and it must have been about £500. I rang this morning and her support worker happened to be with her. They searched all her bags - nothing - and afterwards when he'd gone Mum went to look in her favourite hidey-hole but nothing was there.

I don't want to jump to insulting conclusions about the care worker, but I can't entirely exclude it from my mind. Plus this is something of a crisis. If Mum can't turn up the cash, she won't be able to pay for her shopping call tomorrow. She isn't allowed to pay for it by cheque, it has to be cash in advance.

I don't know what to do...

 

[Kevinl]

Get her pension paid into a bank account then you can monitor it on line and see what's being taken out, where and when. Or could you withdraw a months money for her then put it into envelopes labelled 1st week in May, 2nd week in May 3,4... etc and give her, put it in an agreed place and monitor it that way. In fairness to the carers I found money in all kinds of unlikely place when I came to clear my Mum's house there were over 10 lots of £250 hidden inside shoes, under the paper drawer liners, pockets of clothes in the wardrobe so you never know.
K

 

[Katrine]

Have you spoken to the carer? It is possible she has hung on to the cash for safekeeping, or hidden it in the house somewhere your mum doesn't know about.

It sounds as if this is very early days for you in making arrangements. Letting your mum draw cash in large amounts isn't sensible any more, but what can you do? I suggest you apply to DWP to be your mum's appointee for pension and benefits. You could then have your own bank account for this and manage it online.

How to pay for the shopping? You could arrange for regular deliveries via online shopping. However, if your mum likes to go out and choose her food you don't want to prevent her from having this level of supported independence. Perhaps the boring bulky shopping staples could be ordered online in consultation with the carer, with fresh food shopping still largely done by mum? This would reduce the amount of cash needed.

How would you get the cash to the carer? You can get debit cards that are preloaded with money and then you top up as needed. The carer would be given the card and PIN by you. Alternatively, you could give the carer cash and top it up monthly. Please make sure the carer uses an account book where she can log the money received and spent, plus the receipts for you to check when you visit.

For her sake, as well as yours and mum's, the carer must be protected from risk of being accused of stealing. If your Mum is already squirreling cash, unfortunately this behaviour will only escalate and it is inevitable that money will be lost if your mum still has control of it.

 

[Rosie56]

Thank you, everybody.

I can't speak to the carer in person since she's away on holiday this week, but she'll be back on Monday. I don't think she'll have stored the money away though, because the obvious place to do that is in a locked box of meds (we use it for anything that needs to be hidden from Mum) and the money isn't in there - her support worker confirmed that for me this morning. He sat with Mum while I was on the other end of the phone and she went through all her bags and her purse. No money.

I've been setting up arrangements for longer than you might think but the usual solutions never seem to work with Mum. There's always some snag. I find myself banging my head on the wall with sheer frustration.

I've already applied to be Mum's appointee for her pension and I'm able to manage her bank account online. The incompetence of NatWest meant that it took a very long time to get this working right (FIVE months, during which they kept sending documents intended for me to Mum's address and Mum kept losing them) but it now seems OK. However, despite my best efforts, Mum never learned to use a debit/credit card (just as she has never learned to use a mobile phone, even the simplest kind defeats her) so the cards were taken back to the bank as they were just lying round on the sofa, waiting for someone to steal them. She lets anyone into the house who knocks. No, she won't have a safety chain. Things like safety chains, debit cards and mobile phones were all discussed - at length - long before the dementia became noticeable. I begged her over the years to do the sensible thing and help/protect herself but Mum always resisted anything that needed new learning or unfamiliar arrangements. This stubbornness of hers is making life very difficult now...

I've tried sending groceries that I bought online after consulting with Mum as to what she wanted. Her neighbour who looks in on her told me that Mum didn't understand why I sent multiples and was giving them away to other people or throwing the extra bread into the garden for the birds. She also got very upset at the cost, because she was seeing the price of a few weeks' groceries instead of what it used to cost her to pop to the shops each day. Then she started eating the frozen stuff raw, or not eating it at all. In the end her neighbour started doing the shopping for her, but had to give this up when her own family circumstances started getting more pressured. That's when I set up the pension collection and shopping visits with the care agency. I've already supplied an account book.

I do know that she can have her pension paid into a bank account but she still needs actual cash for the shopping visits - she has to pay cash in advance. I've asked the agency if I can run a tab or pay out of Mum's account (I have a card) but the answer is no.

I don't live close enough to be up and down there every weekend, nor can I afford to (with petrol and kennel fees it costs about £200 before I even see her, and I'm between jobs and living on my savings, which are rapidly disappearing).

I've tried doing things like putting money in envelopes but TBH you might as well mark the envelopes in Chinese, she doesn't read instructions that are left for her. I have a feeling the money would end up being thrown in the bin.

I'm now thinking along the following lines: get the pension paid into the bank and then the care worker will have to take Mum there, to collect cash, before the shopping visit. But she'd need a card for that, wouldn't she?

Or the prepaid debit card might be an idea, if I can talk the agency into it. They might consider it differently from running a tab or settling with them directly.

 

[Katrine]

It sounds as if you've been working hard to put things in place and been thwarted by the authorities and mum's confusion. That build-up of funds in her pension pot needs to be transferred to somewhere safer.

With regard to online shopping, Tesco has a delivery saver system where you can pay a set fee upfront. I pay for the full Monty, which is £60 p.a. for anytime deliveries, but there are cheaper options. You can have no more than one delivery per day and the minimum order for free delivery is £25. Could you make regular small orders rather than doing bulk purchases? Toilet paper, kitchen roll, cleaning products, toiletries, tea, coffee, juice, biscuits, cake, tinned food, pasta, rice, sugar i.e. things for the store cupboard, and leave the carer to help with fresh food shopping.

 

[Onlyme]

I am not sure if your Mum's local supermarket does prepaid food cards but Sainsburys do this.

http://www.sainsburysgifts.co.uk/meal_ticket_cards.html

 

[Rosie56]

The prepaid card would be brilliant if there was one for elderly mothers! That would be ideal. I'll investigate.

I tried Tesco's at an earlier stage when I was still using my own card to pay for everything, and they wouldn't deliver if the billing and delivery addresses were different (this doesn't seem to bother Sainsbury's). However, now I can use Mum's card, smaller deliveries from Tesco might be an option.

There would still be the thorny question of how the carer pays for the fresh food shopping. I think some kind of prepaid card is going to have to come into it, somehow....

The agency might be a bit more receptive to this when someone arrives tomorrow and finds there's no cash unless they go back to the Post Office. I've emailed the agency to warn them of the situation but I don't know if they've read my message.

 

[Katrine]

Tesco deliveries can go to any address, including when you are staying somewhere on holiday.

 

[Not so Rosy]

Tesco deliveries can go to any address, including when you are staying somewhere on holiday.

I agree, in fact I think Tescos were the first to do this. On websites where you can basically hire stately homes for the week ( I do like to hang on to some nice dreams), they all tend to say Tescos deliver here.

 

[Onlyme]

The prepaid card would be brilliant if there was one for elderly mothers! That would be ideal. I'll investigate.

I tried Tesco's at an earlier stage when I was still using my own card to pay for everything, and they wouldn't deliver if the billing and delivery addresses were different (this doesn't seem to bother Sainsbury's). However, now I can use Mum's card, smaller deliveries from Tesco might be an option.

There would still be the thorny question of how the carer pays for the fresh food shopping. I think some kind of prepaid card is going to have to come into it, somehow....

The agency might be a bit more receptive to this when someone arrives tomorrow and finds there's no cash unless they go back to the Post Office. I've emailed the agency to warn them of the situation but I don't know if they've read my message.

You put in your own address but put your Mum's as an additional address. Just remember to always tick 'Mum'

 

[Jessbow]

Can you not put small ammounts in envelopes for the carer to get out, in the locked medical box?

 

[Rosie56]

Interesting to have your feedback on Tesco because I was told very clearly by their customer care that it couldn't be done! Perhaps the person on duty that day didn't understand the rules and gave me bad information.

The carer collects Mum's pension with her and would have to put the money into the box. It's quite a lot of responsibility and what does she do with the rest of it? (Mum doesn't spend anywhere up to the full amount.) The usual carer is on holiday this week and the relief carer couldn't get Mum to the post office this morning to get any money at all - Mum just went into a panic and wouldn't budge (I know this kind of panic well, she sometimes gets it with me and won't move out of the door for obsessive checking and re-checking inside her bag and purse).

I've been doing some research. It would protect both the carer and Mum if we had something like the Lebara Money Card (recommended by Martin Lewis) which is preloaded and can be used anywhere you can use a MasterCard, including ATMs. I've asked Lebara for further info and have also strongly suggested it to the caring agency, because if large amounts of money continue to get lost it's just going to be horrible for everyone involved.

Having been occupied with this problem for 3 days, I phoned Mum this morning to check everything was OK and there was food in the house. A neighbour was there and I could hear Mum moaning to her that I was 'terrible' and 'really got on her nerves' with my interference (aka caring and trying to sort things out for her). She lives in a fantasy that she's coping well whereas if I hadn't been running round setting up support over these last months, she'd be completely up the creek sans paddle. I know it's the illness talking but sometimes it can all feel very thankless, can't it?

 

[Rosie56]

The money has turned up! Very relieved that it's accounted for (an entire month of pension) though it seems that Mum is now moving her stashes round the house since this is a place she hasn't used to hold money before. Two neighbours found it this evening. One of them tried to help search for it yesterday and looked in the same place - it wasn't there at that time.