care in the uk - a disgrace

[StoneRoad]

Thanks hash tag - normality has, more or less, returned. However, the "new" care company staff don't seem to be particularly proactive. It will be interesting to see if the details in the updated care plan are actually being implemented. Basically having to "train" them in the foibles of the house and elderly resident (which may take a while). One of the main carers in the team has just had a couple of weeks annual leave, so there will have been a range of "stand-ins" doing the visits. Not looking forward to the weekend, catching up the slack ...

Oh, FFS !!!!
Just discovered that the medication thing has been cattle-trucked, yet again.
Care Company manager parroting "not in the care plan" and the pharmacy locum trying to tell me that there wasn't a prescription "standing order" for delivery to a 98 1/2 year old who is house-bound.
Although it has now been sorted, I hope, but I thought that before ... It took me quite some time - and multiple phone calls - to get some action and nearly as long to calm down !

 

[mojo pixy]

We're still hideously short staffed to the point where we've had to book 5 agency shifts a week till November.

On the plus side, it's a nice gift to those guys who slog for the agency, on zero hours contracts with no paid holiday.

 

[friendofdorothy]

This is a care thing is as much as this person is having his benefits slashed by 42% and will lose some of his care. This has been playing on my mind for days now. Some shit face of a tory was on the radio last week taking about this and PIPs and stuff "well of course some people will get their benefits cut a bit, but you will find that those really in need will get more". It is difficult looking at this case to understand what really in need really means.
I did not vote for this nasty evil party!

Disabled man Luke Davey's care cuts appeal dismissed - BBC News

Not unlawful? but how is this man supposed to manage with such a huge cut in his care budget? It's just ridiculous. Another Tory disgrace.

 

[crossthebreeze]

Just saw this on the news, it seems like the most appropriate thread to put this on:
NHS may rent spare rooms to ease bed crisis
An NHS pilot scheme in Essex could see patients discharged to strangers homes - and its being advertised as an earner (£50 a day/£1000 a month) for the hosts.
Lots that could go wrong with that.

 

[hash tag]

It's crazy isn't it. The homeowners will have to under go checks, may have to undergo first aid training, maybe more and be expected to provide 3 cooked meals a day.
For an elderly person who woud otherwise lives alone, this would be great, they may not move out. Fraught with difficulties, because instead of planning and expanding hospitals for the future, wards, nurses and doctors have been cut. Sounds like a third world type effort.

 

[Plumdaff]

The Save Southend A&E campaign group, whose members include doctors and other clinicians, warned it “opens a huge can of worms for safeguarding, governance and possible financial and emotional abuse of people at their most vulnerable time”.

Well, quite. No chance of massive and disgusting exploitation there....

 

[crossthebreeze]

It's crazy isn't it. The homeowners will have to under go checks, may have to undergo first aid training, maybe more and be expected to provide 3 cooked meals a day.
For an elderly person who woud otherwise lives alone, this would be great, they may not move out. Fraught with difficulties, because instead of planning and expanding hospitals for the future, wards, nurses and doctors have been cut. Sounds like a third world type effort.

and its the cuts to social/personal care (and how hard it is to get temporary social care) that often stop people going back to their own home (even when some support is available from friends/neighbours), and the lack of care home beds and temporary accessible/sheltered housing, and cuts to everything else that exacerbates the situation.

 

[hash tag]

Now, dear, vunerable person, in returnin for leaving me a little something in your will, I could make yor stay with me a little more pleasent.
So right about sheltered and carers.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Is this any different to fostering children?

 

[hash tag]

Seeing as you ask, yes, very.
Children are fostered not because they are unwell, but because they are in need of somewhere to live and care for them.
Fobbing off people to these temporary care homes is because they might not be able to care fully for themselves when they get out of hospital following a proceedure because the hospital desperately needs the bed and because there is not a sufficient care system for these people.

 

[Boudicca]

I know of a couple of refugees who were not able to have leg/knee operations because they had no support and lived in accommodation which was unsuitable for recuperation. So something like this would have been useful in this instance.

Broken bones is a very straightforward example though. I'm not sure I would want the responsibility of someone recovering from heart surgery in my house.

 

[hash tag]

If someone came to stay with you had an accident and started bleeding or someone had had an operation and started bleeding, had dementia; would you know how to cope, would you want to. Alternatively, if you were the patient, would you want to stay with someone who is unsure of what to do in an emergency. Just full of pitfalls.

 

[snowy_again]

Just saw this on the news, it seems like the most appropriate thread to put this on:
NHS may rent spare rooms to ease bed crisis
An NHS pilot scheme in Essex could see patients discharged to strangers homes - and its being advertised as an earner (£50 a day/£1000 a month) for the hosts.
Lots that could go wrong with that.

And using telehealth to monitor it seems - via some sort of Microsoft single machine which will do vid / tele conference to GP, and then carer visits to do everything else (meds, personal care etc).

 

[friendofdorothy]

Broken bones is a very straightforward example though. I'm not sure I would want the responsibility of someone recovering from heart surgery in my house.

My uncle with throat cancer who's home was a mess was released to stay with my dad - who had heart disease/angina - I thought they were both going to die. Allegedly my uncle didn't need looking after, apart from district nurses - only feeding according to the hospital. The fact that he could hardly eat and keep throwing up / having diarrhoea all over my dads carpets did not seem to matter to them at all. I practically begged his gp to help and he got in macmillan nurses who had him admitted to the local hospice. His surgeon, his gp, social services, and hospice care staff all insisted he was going to be fine and would be able to live independantly, up to 12 hours before he died.

This sounds like care on the cheap, with fewer regulations than care homes/hospitals. Nightmare for patients and potential carers alike.

 

[friendofdorothy]

And using telehealth to monitor it seems - via some sort of Microsoft single machine which will do vid / tele conference to GP, and then carer visits to do everything else (meds, personal care etc).

Microsoft machine? what could possibly go wrong

 

[agricola]

Is this any different to fostering children?

Yes, as when children are fostered they usually stay with foster parents. This on the other hand will never last as an airbnb style "rent your spare room to sick people" - it will almost certainly lead to the expansion of the care sector providing care for the sick as well as the elderly and the mentally ill.

Given how some of that sector has historically treated the elderly and the mentally ill - sub-minimum wage staff, bullying, lack of basic care etc - this should be terrifying for everyone, especially as they are doing it for "up to" £1000 a month which basically guarantees bad behaviour.

 

[snowy_again]

And now the scheme's been scrapped (or at least the hospital says its not participating):

NHS drops 'Airbnb' plans to hire spare rooms at £50 a night

 

[hash tag]

Southend hospital has said it won't be participating. No doubt someone else will pick it up.

 

[eatmorecheese]

It looks like a kite was flown to test general reactions. I fully expect this 'idea' to be revisited over the next few years. Utterly bonkers.

 

[hash tag]

Four seasons care home heavily in debt, about to go under or be bought out by bankers. Care homes are for care not for running by bankers for profit. In the meantime about 17000 people are left worrying about their homes, their care, their friends US hedge fund will make £500m on Four Seasons care homes | This is Money

 

[friendofdorothy]

Four seasons care home heavily in debt, about to go under or be bought out by bankers. Care homes are for care not for running by bankers for profit. In the meantime about 17000 people are left worrying about their homes, their care, their friends US hedge fund will make £500m on Four Seasons care homes | This is Money

liked for the info - not for the content obviously.

I really don't see how any care home can make a profit.

 

[hash tag]

They shouldn't be run for profit, they are a care home, not a business like a bank or insurance company run for the benefit of a hedge fund, pension fund, shareholders. (sorry friendofdorothy, not a dig at you but the system that allows this to happen). Fucking tories.

 

[hash tag]

I notice she went through 18 agencies but don't know why, but all the same another glittering example Disabled women dies alone in soiled clothes after council stops her care

 

[mojo pixy]

I noticed

Her care was axed on December 10 last year amid claims she had been verbally abusive to staff.

I know it's not very nice to be cursed at but to withdraw care completely because of it is a fucking disgrace. Nobody apparently caring that she was distressed, scared, maybe in pain, and so yes, lashing out. The staff's feels were apparently more important, ''our staff do not deserve to be spoken to like that'' blah. OK yes, nobody deserves to be cursed at but equally nobody ''deserves'' never to be cursed at, either. Basically deserves doesn't come into it, and IMO staff's feels are not as important as a helpless person getting care they need. Staff can take a deep breath, act like a professional and debrief later, but because that wasn't considered this woman died.

Properly trained staff should have been sent to do the work, not snowflakes who crumbled at the first sign of challenging behaviour.

/rant

 

[hash tag]

Why was she swearing, maybe because the carers didn't care?
It is wrong but Sometimes getting sworn at goes with the territory. I have witnessed a really bad incident and reported it as a safeguarding issue, but 9 times out of 10, I would have a quick word with the client.

 

[TruXta]

I've seen comments (IIRC in the Portsmouth paper that first reported this) to the effect that certain clients deemed "troublesome" can get blacklisted by local care providers? Anyone heard similar stories?

e2a lots of depressing comments of a similar nature here

 

[Shechemite]

When I was in ‘care’ staff would file incident reports citing ‘challenging behaviour’ and ‘verbal abuse’ when I challenged them about their own appalling conduct (and after repeated formal complaints my concerns were upheld and said staff members disciplined). The incident reports contained outright lies about their own conduct (which was proven after investigation) as well as mine.

Of course as a ‘service user’ you have no right to any sort of process. You can be damned by the word of those whose ‘care’ you are in.

I would take any allegations about ‘verbal abuse’ carried out by service users with a massive dose of salt.

 

[hash tag]

As a service user would you know how to complain or could you even feel the strength and energy to do so.
Admittedly it was not quite a care issue as such, but I raised a complaint about my fathers care. Is this a formal or informal complaint? Formal - we first have to have his written authority to proceed with the complaint.
You have raised a formal complaint; we will have to carry out some investigations, you will probably not hear from us for a few weeks. Several weeks later, it was not their fault, please provide this information, that information and goodness knows what else. I quickly lost the will to live

 

[TruXta]

my hunch is that this is a particularly serious problem for people in receipt of mh services or that have dementia or similar.

 

[hash tag]

It's a serious problem for anyone who is vulnerable.