Care in Crisis

[enaid]

Please click on the link below to sign the petition. There are also links on there for all kinds of info on help of all kinds, thanks Enaid x

Care is in crisis. Many of those who need help and support are being badly let down by a faltering system, while others find themselves having to sell their homes in order to pay for support they need.

Take action now
We are calling on the Government to reform the care system to ensure people in later life receive high quality care and support.

We want to collect 100,000 signatures and you can add your name to our petition right now:

Campaign, social care and support services, local authority, Age UK, Dilnot

[jane1108]

Re: Care in Crisis

Hi Enaid

I will gladly sign the petition

It is such a worry the way care is going in this country, having been a carer for 23 years until my daughter passed away in December, it is so upsetting to see progress that was made over the last 20 years being stripped away by the day

I also lost my father last year, he went downhill very quickly with Dementia and Prostate Cancer and the care available was truly appalling (even if you did have the money to pay for it). Many elderly people in particular are also being wrongly charged for care when they should be getting it for free i.e. they should get Continuing Health Care. Even when you know the system and the law surrounding it, its extremely difficult to get the care one's loved one needs. That's very wrong, the elderly in particular are getting the raw end of the deal not just financial but in terms of the care being provided. My father had the misfortune to end up in a Southern Cross home, the care was awful and we had him moved sadly he passed away shortly afterwards but at least the home he did pass away in was very good and treated him with so much respect and gave him lots of TLC, unfortunately homes like that are in very short supply. He got CHC on leaving hospital at 3 months review the CHC Co-ordinator who quite frankly was a b**** on her recommendation ONLY tried to pull it, he died 3 weeks later

[dogtired]

Re: Care in Crisis

Will sign
I have been in care/nursing all my working life and to be frank it HAS become nothing but a lottery.
If you had property you had to sell if not you got either total or part funding, I did try to ensure that all the people I cared for were treated equally.
DT x

[enaid]

Re: Care in Crisis

As sad as your post is jane I must thank you for your input.
I too am a carer for my daughter and my dad and although I have a very good care package in place for my daughter (which I will fight nail and tooth to keep) my dad is being failed terribly imho. I have today once again been on an appointment with him and have had to once again phone round people demanding he gets the help he needs.
At last he may be assessed as up to yet they can do nothing they say until he gives his full permission. All I am trying to do is prevent a major accident from happening to him, something they seem to think needs to happen before they can take care of him.
We will all be aged unless unfortunate to lose our lives prematurely, so while we think all is ok at the end of the road it is far from such and going down hill rapidly.
When we start to treat prisoners with more respect and rights than our elderly then one can only imagine what the future holds for our offspring and indeed this once great country.

[jane1108]

Re: Care in Crisis

Enaid very well put and likewise my daughter had a very good care package, I had to fight very hard for it and I'm glad I did and she had the joy of living in her own flat with her carers for 3 + years despite the severity of her disabilities. I know if we were having to negotiate that care package now there would be no chance of getting it, for starters it was a 1/3 funded by ILF which has been closed to new applications for a while now and is on the government's hit list to close completely

Really sorry to hear you are going through such a tough time with your Dad, it can be very difficult to get old people to have care, thankfully before my Dad got really ill with the cancer he did agree to carers going in, although we arranged it privately as we knew he would have to meet all the costs anyway. We did our best to keep him in his own home as long as we could.

"A measure of society is not how it treats it's children, but how it looks after it's elderly" very true that and as you say we will all be old, sooner than we think, I really worry how bad it will be then, which is why we must stand up and fight now.

[Ergoperson]

Re: Care in Crisis

I have signed the petition. I work in 'social care' as an occupational therapist and despair at the current care towards elderly people. Individuals, in health and social care, often do their best but the relevant systems are all busy trying to swerve their current obligations to vulnerable people, particularly the elderly. Poorly planned discharges from hospitals, lack of rehabilitation in hospital and the community, no real emphasis on prevention, leading to crisis situations and catastrophic consequences for individuals and their families/community, ultimately more expense for us funding, either individually or as a society.

[Monzter]

Re: Care in Crisis

Anyone who watched Panorama last night will be as disgusted as me. For institutional abuse on be going on like that, managers must have been aware, and as for the guy who assaulted that lady - I am at a loss for words.

What angered me too though was even though the care staff were heard complaining about lack of adequate staff and equipment, this avenue wasn't explored at all. Don't get me wrong, I have worked on EMI units and been ridiculously short staffed, and have NEVER treated someone the way I saw last night. However, this is a real problem. You have home owners cutting budgets to make more profit and managers get incentives to keep costs down. The manager nor the owners of the home appeared to be questioned about the lack of staff or training.

You are under an awful lot of pressure in places like this when you are short of staff. People with a mental illness need to be treated with compassion and understanding so trust can be established, how can you do that when you have 3 staff and 17 residents to feed, wash, bathe, give medication to and put to bed in around 3 hours? Baring in mind someone needs to be 'on the floor' to answer buzzers and ensure the residents not in bed are safe, that leaves 2 people to do that. That's around 10 minutes per resident - yet the guidelines for staffing levels are 1 staff to 5 residents (I think) with a recommendation that this be increased according to resident needs. So 3 staff to 17 residents is within guidelines and would be considered compliant. How can that be right?

The whole area needs looking at, care companies should have profits they can make capped, bonuses for managers who are good, not ones that save money and better pay, training and status for care assistants.

The CQC are quite simply, useless. A home that knows how to write a correct policy and show written 'evidence' (whether it actually happened or not) will pass an inspection. The inspectors do speak to staff and residents, but, staff won't speak up for fear of their jobs and they do have bills to pay and cannot afford to be branded a trouble maker. There is no back up for care assistants who whistle blow, I know I have been one. Residents many times cannot express their fears or concerns, or think that homes are 'like that' and the treatment they receive is normal, or fear retribution if they speak up. So the CQC come away with a good report and the abuse continues.

Care is just a money spinner these days and the companies and managers pass the buck to the care staff and then the whole thing starts again. There are good homes out there - a good way to tell, regardless of the inspection report is to find out how long the staff have been there - bad homes have high turnovers of staff. Also ask around the local area, google news stories on the place you are thinking of and speak with your local GP and nurses - they visit homes and will have a good idea of what they are really like.

Please don't tar all homes or care assistants with the same brush as those horrible, horrible things we saw last night, there are good ones with people who care and just want to help people.

[dogtired]

Re: Care in Crisis

Totally agree with you.
I have been in care/nursing all my adult life, but now I am so upset, angry and depressed.
Care and humanity seem to gone I dont want to do it any more :'(

[Monzter]

Re: Care in Crisis

I know how you feel DT, as a profession, we are the bad guys again.

Totally demoralising.

[enaid]

Re: Care in Crisis

I haven't watched panorama as yet, I have only seen the news coverage and that was enough.
I have said before and will say again if we do not do something now then we are in a sad recline and likely end up worse than things were in Victorian times for the old and infirm.

I feel for the genuine carers and there are lots I am sure of that, pay them their worth and they will do their job not only because they really do care but also because they are made to feel they are valued.
They will also make sure that the reputation of the places they work will stay up to standard as required and often better.

[valeriej43]

Re: Care in Crisis

I have signed and passed it on, didnt see the Panorama programme, but saw a bit on the news about the family who are i believe suing, and the picture of their mother,
Its disgusting what this Government are doing to vulnerable people