Rant

[David0169]

Social services and Community Care Team are bloody useless - I'm still waiting for a call from Social Services, they've been promising to call me for weeks and still no response, I've also been waiting since January for pressure pads to be fitted by the community care team what a joke - my ex fell last night whilst in his bathroom had it not been for my partner hearing him and sorting him out he would have been their until this morning, I'm the one that usually wakes up in the night but as Id actually been awake for nearly 19 hours I was totally shattered and just slept thro, yet they all go on about us the carer making sure we look after ourselves yet they the so called professionals don't exactly rush to sort things out when they promise to do something - I know this much should anything happen to peter I will make sure everyone knows how useless they are at their jobs, but we all know what their response will be lol we've learnt important lessons etc ect and nothing will change

 

[BizzyLizzy]

Sorry to hear you are having a bad time. We too have had a bad experience with social services. Our referral took six months to come through and when we finally got the care package in place, the carers were terrible. They wouldn't come at the time we needed them, the care agency never produced a care plan for the carers to refer to when they came in (we wrote one ourselves - but it was very rarely referred to) and sometimes they just didn't turn up at all! One day I got a call at work just after midday from my panick stricken mum saying that no one had been and dad was still in bed unable to get up. He had not had food, liquids or his meds. It lasted six weeks and was so stressful that we gave up. We now employ the only good carer that worked for the agency directly and pay her more than she was getting with them. She comes in each morning and gets them up, showered, dressed, gives them breakfast and their meds and gets them settled. This works well for us - but we are lucky having found a good carer. Social services promised us all sorts of things that never materialised and we have slowly manged to get the things we need ourselves over time. We haven't had much luck with the NHS either! But that's a whole, much longer story. We have managed by lowering our expectations so that we don't get disappointed any more. We have learnt that you have to be prepared to find the time to chase people, think laterally and sometimes to approach teams directly rather than waiting for referrals. When you finally get your social services referral - make sure you get more than one name and contact number so that you have multiple opportunities to chase up what has been promised. Also be prepared to leave messages on answer phones that don't get responded to. Sorry I can't be more positive.