waiting for care support

[j.s.king]

Hi everyone,
just wondering what the average waiting time is to get social services to provide care support visits ? My dad was diagnosed with AD early in the Summer and the dementia dr wrote to the local Social Services mid July recommending that he gets 2 care support visits per day. Despite numerous phone calls to social services the standard response seems to be "he's on the waiting list"

 

[monkeygirl15]

Hi j.s King

I haven't been on here long and never thought I'd be able to offer any advice or support - but maybe I can here.

I got some really good advice from a worker at the Memory Clinic. He told me to start emailing social services. I found it impossible to find and email address for them online but if you ring up and ask they have to give you an email. The advisor from the Memory Clinic told me that if something's in writing, it pushes it up the list. A phone call is deniable but in writing - well, it's there. If there's no email (and remember I had to ring to get it) then send a letter by registered delivery. Emphasise your concerns and what you need and the potential "risks" if no support is given.

I've done it twice now - each time after being repeatedly fobbed off. Both times I have had not just one phone call but several within just a few hours and action following it. Also maybe contact your local Age UK who do offer some services and if you have a local Carers Service they also a really good.

Hope that helps a bit Take care

 

[j.s.king]

Hi @j.s.king, I am so sorry to hear about your Dad's diagnosis and that you are still waiting for support to be put in place. I'm afraid I don't have particularly good news for you as far as the waiting list goes. I also live in Hampshire and have twice, through 2 separate referrals in the last 2 and a half years, been waiting for home care to be put in place for my Mum, who has Vascular Dementia. This second time we have been waiting on the 'waiting list' for four months and that's with my Mum being classified as urgent and having been in temporary emergency respite in between to give me a break. We have just received a care agency offer today. Social Services everywhere are overstretched and underfunded as we all know, but it can be a worrying and stressful experience to be part of a national statistic!

Mum's care comes via Winchester SS even though we are miles from there, rather than Southampton as in your case, so it may not be quite the same in your borough. She is local authority funded. If your Dad is not self-funding, in reality I'm afraid there is little you can do to speed this up. Social Services now work with a brokerage team who buy in all the care through a separate dept., where just a few months ago, Social Workers were able to arrange this themselves directly on clients' behalf. They can no longer do this and all care agencies have to be contracted to SS at the rate they will pay. Sadly, many agencies in my area (and supposedly yours) just will not contract to them as the SS rate is so much lower than the actual going rate for private care. I know this because I have been so desperate myself in the past whilst waiting that I have phoned care agencies to ask them if they will contract to social services. The answer was always a resounding no. They will not pay them the going rate. As an example only, SS will pay £14.85 per hour to an agency for home care. Most agencies in my area charge £25 - £28 per hour and some more than that. Mum's Social Worker has said to me quite bluntly that 'there is nothing out there'. It all boils down to money in the end, sadly. However, if your Dad has the funds to buy in his own care there is no reason why you can not bypass Social Services completely and find a care agency local to your own area immediately. This may be dependent on you having Power of Attorney if he is not able to make that decision for himself.

Hopefully, if you do need to wait for Social Services for funding reasons, someone will be in touch with you very soon. I do hope so. You will find so much help and advice on Talking Point from people with vast and differing experience and it is such a caring community. You can always come here for support. Fingers crossed that the wait will not be much longer for support for your Dad.

Thanks Carma, dad comes under Romsey which has lots of rural areas like Winchester so I think that adds to the problem. He will be LA funded but is currently using savings to pay for private care support to come in and give him his meds each morning as overdoses if left to do himself, I then give him PM meds after work and leave his nighttime ones for him to take, which he usually does. I really need someone to visit late in the evening to check he's taken his meds and to lock his front door as he keeps it unlocked and open and won't let me lock it when I leave as he likes to walk round the block in the evening, but I know he often forgets to lock it. Even if we got a key safe he'd still keep the door open!

 

[j.s.king]

Hi j.s King

I haven't been on here long and never thought I'd be able to offer any advice or support - but maybe I can here.

I got some really good advice from a worker at the Memory Clinic. He told me to start emailing social services. I found it impossible to find and email address for them online but if you ring up and ask they have to give you an email. The advisor from the Memory Clinic told me that if something's in writing, it pushes it up the list. A phone call is deniable but in writing - well, it's there. If there's no email (and remember I had to ring to get it) then send a letter by registered delivery. Emphasise your concerns and what you need and the potential "risks" if no support is given.

I've done it twice now - each time after being repeatedly fobbed off. Both times I have had not just one phone call but several within just a few hours and action following it. Also maybe contact your local Age UK who do offer some services and if you have a local Carers Service they also a really good.

Hope that helps a bit Take care

Thank you monkey girl ! That sounds like a plan , I'll be asking for their email if I don't hear anything by the end of next week.

 

[monkeygirl15]

Thank you monkey girl ! That sounds like a plan , I'll be asking for their email if I don't hear anything by the end of next week.

I hope it helps

 

[j.s.king]

I hope it helps

Finally dads case has been allocated to someone and he is coming out to assess him on Friday !

 

[Shedrech]

good news @j.s.king
be prepared - have a printed list of all the things that are a concern to you, everything that your dad has any difficulty with, and exactly what support you would ideally like to have put in place; not the minimum, everything you can think of - who knows you may get most of it - good luck

 

[Onmyown]

Me too! Do like me hound them... I ring everyday they know me probably hate me but hound them until you get the care at the door. I'm been given the run around contact public nurse. I'm sick again this month I just can't do this alone. I need help now. I'm writing a letter soon to everyone to highlight my issues. Doctor dosnt see dementia but fails to listen to her behaviour issues so I'm writing it all down. My friend has been here and she's been my rock and said you have to put the pressure on. Draining I know but I'm slowly getting there.

 

[Slugsta]

I am glad your father has now got to the top of the list and hope things will soon start moving for you/him.

I know that Mum had quite a wait, even after she had been assessed and deemed in need of help. The problem was that none of the agencies (those that would work with the LA) had spare carers for the 'peak time' visits. Mum was always an early riser so a first visit late morning would have been no good at all. Eventually a new agency opened in the area and we were able to get carers for the morning and evening visits.

Later on Mum's needs increased and I contacted SS again. On this occasion we waited and waited. On phoning I was told that my letter had been passed to SS but was still waiting for a 'case worker' to be free to take it on. It appears that no-one will even review to assess urgency until the case gets to the top of the list I eventually wrote to the Head of Services, my MP and the local councillor in charge of SS. It was the councillor who gave SS a kick up the derriere and got things moving.

I agree with the advice to put everything in writing so that you have an audit trail' that cannot be denied.

 

[Marnie63]

Don't forget about 'Direct Payments' where SS will pay you the financial value of the care package agreed, and then you buy the care from the agency of your choice. I asked for this from the start for mum as I had already identified a reputable local agency. The agency charge more per hour than SS pay, but I use the SS allocation to buy what I need from the agency. It means a binder full of invoices and other paperwork as you have to keep records, but I like all that so it doesn't bother me.

Maybe utilising Direct Payments would speed things up? Of course this will only work if you can find an agency with capacity to support you. It's beginning to feel like agencies are now struggling to keep up with demand as when mum had her stroke in August (and her care needs increased considerably), the agency warned me up front that they would struggle to provide all the support I would need. It has turned out that they have been able to, but of course I was an existing client.

I hope everyone waiting soon gets their assessment. I can't complain about my part of Hampshire (I'm in the north of the county), they have been excellent, but I guess we did have the 'advantage' of mum being in hospital and having her care package agreed as part of her hospital discharge, way back in 2015.

 

[j.s.king]

That's good news @j.s.king. Hope all goes well with the assessment.

Hi , assessment went well as dad was having a bad day and dozed and mumbled through most of it so they are agreeing that he needs care assistance and once his finances have been assessed will provide funding , which should be straight forward . Just waiting for the finance assessors to make contact now .

 

[Slugsta]

Thanks for the update, I hope that things will soon be put in place for you/your dad.