Seeking advice about putting in a new cloakroom or wet room

[Fearnodarkness]

After breaking her hip, Mum has been told she is not safe in her own home because of the staircase, and because with Alzheimers she will forget that she is not safe to use it.

She's now in a care home, which at present she would rather not be. As far as we can see, the only hope of getting her home is if we can get a new cloakroom or wet room fitted on the ground floor, and close off the upper floor securely so that she can't get onto the stairs. She has even suggested that she could cope with "bedsit living" - I would hope to do more than that, she has two good rooms and her kitchen on the ground floor.

Does anyone have any experience of doing this? I would ideally like to find some kind of modular cloakroom or wetroom, if possible, that could be fitted while she needs it, and then removed again if she has to go back into care (she is in her 90s) or dies. We can't afford an elaborate conversion as she has limited savings. There is no "accessible" toilet on the ground floor at present. She does not use a wheel chair, and indeed she was fully mobile before she broke her hip, but she is also very old.

We have some information on design, but I am having difficulty finding information on practicalities.

Any advice appreciated.

 

[jaymor]

I googled modular bathrooms for disabled and they do exist

 

[nitram]

Try Googling with pods included eg disabled pods, bathroom pods , wetroom pods.....

 

[Louise7]

As far as we can see, the only hope of getting her home is if we can get a new cloakroom or wet room fitted on the ground floor, and close off the upper floor securely so that she can't get onto the stairs.

I think it might be helpful to first seek advice/assessment from an occupational therapist to confirm whether installing one would ensure that your Mum can go home safely. The 'pods' are not cheap - I was given a 'ball park' quote of around £25k to supply and fit a 'pod' with shower, toilet & sink. From experience (the LA were planning to install one for my Mum) they need to be ideally fitted to an outside wall for ventilation. A surveyor had to assess the house to see whether the layout was suitable in terms of plumbing/waste pipe and depending on location there might be a need for the waste pipe to run under the floorboards so there has to be sufficient clearance.

 

[Soobee]

I would advise against spending significant sums of money. Whenever we spent money on making life easier for my (late) mum, she had a downturn very soon after which meant she never got any benefit from any of it.

In her case, she fell on her hip and although it wasn't broken, she never mobilised again afterwards, she never tried to walk. There was no downstairs loo, there was a commode chair. She lived in the lounge from then on, with a hoist and two carers for personal care. They used a bucket/sink bowl and two flannels to wash her, and an inflatable paddling-pool-like contraption to wash her hair. It is doable to manage without the wetroom, if you have to. The difference here is that your mum was mobile, there are obviously other dangers with being able to get to a kitchen etc.

 

[Fearnodarkness]

Thank you so much for these replies. The suggestion about getting an OT assessment has already led to me having a constructive call with the local council adult services - they have a waiting list, but he gave me some idea about timescales, and also suggested where to look for a private OT practitioner if we wanted to act more quickly. And Soobee's note about how you do things and then they either don't benefit or don't last - really confirms our experiences so far. It also adds some really helpful first hand experience of how single-floor living for a mentally incapacitated person might work. Mum was fairly competent in her own kitchen, but I think if she goes back we will need to have the gas hob disconnected and move the microwave back into the kitchen. And possibly get her fridge moved in there, as it's currently in a utility room, but she keeps forgetting it's there ...

Yes, anything fitted will almost certainly need a new waste pipe run under the floor - I am fairly sure there is a floor space (I haven't seen the carpets up in 40 years, so I don't know. My husband might.) but I hadn't anticipated that it might not be deep enough for a waste pipe. An outside wall, I think we can do, as the downstairs living rooms do have an exterior wall with no windows.

Part of the challenge is that Mum is both "mobile" and "vocal". She has a remarkable capacity for recovery (which has kept her largely independent within her own home into her 96th year) and is mobilising herself, it seems, faster than anyone expected her to - but because of her age, we can't ever again assume she will be safe on a staircase by herself. BUT she is also not good at accepting help from anyone, particularly if she doesn't know them, and is very sharp tongued - she managed to upset at least one of her "shopping helpers" quite badly even before the accident, and was asked to leave her first respite placement because she was "snapping at people and upsetting them", to an extent we had not anticipated (and strangely enough, wasn't doing in hospital - though it may have been that the staff would be her main target there, and they are used to dealing with levels of rebellion among patients.) So we have to be upfront about this when looking for carers.

I have to say, I am now really glad we did not find a care home placement for her before her accident, although she has intermittently expressed an interest in going into a residential home for more company. The current home sees itself and its residents as more robust than the nice but rather genteel place she was in to start with.

Lots more stuff to think about, thanks again.