Trouble with the language

How we talk about dementia, and people with dementia, is a thorny issue. It is easy to be accused of being politically correct, or losing sight of the real issues by getting hung up on the language we use to describe them, but whilst I would be the first to admit that there is a fine line between being respectful and pedantic, looking at the way we talk about dementia and people with dementia is important to shaping viewpoints, breaking down stigma and improving dementia care.

That doesn’t mean that I think we should go as far as renaming dementia (see this post on NCD). After all, increased awareness and support for people with cancer didn’t happen because we changed the name, it happened because we changed attitudes and educated society. Dementia is now slowly seeping into the public consciousness, and I don’t think the word itself is a barrier to progress and positivity, but some of the terms associated with dementia are helping to keep the disease in the dark ages.

A snapshot of some of my main bugbears and the reasons I don’t like them are listed below, along with some alternative suggestions. Sadly, all of words I have highlighted here are still regularly used across society, by everyone from media organisations to professionals in health and social care, and even families of people with dementia who don’t understand the disease. Interestingly though, if you read the work of people who are living with dementia and documenting their journey, you won’t see them choosing these descriptions for themselves. Food for thought I think!

Senile is a grossly outdated word that should be abolished from our language.

No one with any ounce of modern thinking uses the term ‘senile dementia’ anymore. It is exceptionally negative, implies that the person is worthless, without any quality of life and unable to make any contribution to society. If anyone had described my father as being senile at any stage of his dementia I would have been outraged.

Senile is also a very age-related term, therefore reinforcing the misconception that dementia is a disease of old age, when it can affect people of all ages, even children, although those cases are rare.

Attach the word ‘senile’ to dementia and it becomes hugely stigmatising, negative and totally inappropriate for the modern understanding of dementia and the care people with it should be receiving. Thankfully, the widespread use of ‘senile’ has been eradicated, and in my opinion any references to it now are archaic.

Service user is a common term in social care, even though turning care into a ‘service’ and a person into a ‘user’ is a concept very far removed from what most families would want for their loved one.

We were completely against this description in relation to my father since it implied a production line approach to running a care home. An establishment where numerous people from different backgrounds live and work together, hopefully in relative harmony, is surely a community, therefore the model of referring to everyone within that building as ‘community members’ brings a sense of warmth, belonging and engenders respect and dignity. A great example of this is the Healthy Living Club @ Lingham Court (http://www.healthylivingclub.org.uk/). People with dementia, their carers and friends are members in this self-directed community group – a refreshing approach that many organisations could learn from.

Client is another widely used word to describe people living in a care home, receiving care in their own home, or taking part in activities run by day centres or community groups.

However, for me it is associated with a transaction approach. You pay money and receive something in return; a bit like visiting a solicitor. Whilst technically this is what happens in many cases, it does nothing to reflect the need for personalisation or compassion that is so vital in dementia care. Again, for ‘client’ how about ‘member’ – it implies teamwork, puts those giving and receiving care on the same level and underpins the need to understand each other.

Toileting is another term that I loathe.

People with dementia should be assisted to use toilet facilities if they need help, but not have such an important aspect of daily life made to sound like a regimented and degrading system. As an example of how strongly I feel about this term, when we were looking for a care home for my father we visited one where the nurse in charge openly told us that they had ‘Toileting Times’ (as I wrote about here). Needless to say dad never set foot in that home, and any other care home adopting such an approach should radically rethink – how would their staff feel if they were ‘toileted’?

Sufferers is a term that has long been used in relation to people with dementia, it appears regularly across the media and infuriates many, myself included, who are campaigning for a better understanding of dementia.

Amongst those who dislike this term the most are people who are living with dementia and sharing their story to help the world understand that they are not looking for sympathy or pity – something that the term ‘sufferer’ implies. They want to be seen as a person in their own right, not as a disease.

I’m all in favour of the drive to bring positivity to dementia care, provide hope and break down stigma. Describing people as ‘living with dementia’ rather than ‘suffering from dementia’ is designed to enforce the point that you can live well with dementia. That is not to imply that there aren’t huge challenges – I would be the first to admit that my father often suffered greatly as a result of his dementia, and indeed the other illnesses that eventually went with it, like pneumonia, UTI’s etc.

However, over the course of his journey with dementia, dad still had far more good days than bad ones. Days when we smiled, laughed, sang, ate and explored the simple things in life together. Days of complete silence and yet pure serenity and calm. Days of endless chatter that either of us really understood but didn’t need to because we had each other’s company.

In all of those moments, my dad was living with dementia and we were living with him, making the best of things and not thinking about suffering. The pleasure we had in each other’s company is something I will always miss.

Until next time...

You can follow me on Twitter: @bethyb1886

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Design challenge

As our population ages, designing environments that are aesthetically pleasing whilst also offering exceptional functionality is one of the key challenges in helping our older generation to enjoy longevity in happiness and comfort.

Where we live, work or socialise has huge implications on our health and wellbeing throughout our lives. Addressing practical considerations whilst making somewhere appealing to our senses isn’t easy, and as we get older we may have physical or mental health problems that impact upon our daily living, and eventually mean we require residential care. So how do you meet the challenge of designing environments for older people that give them the sanctuary and pleasure that we all seek in life?

On my travels around the UK I have visited care homes of all shapes and sizes, some incredibly smart, others very plain, a few quite run down. I’ve been to care homes steeped in history and tucked away down long driveways in the countryside, and big modern purpose-built homes in the heart of towns with schools and rows of semi-detached houses as neighbours. I’ve seen the sort of luxury environments that come with an equally impressive price-tag, and witnessed expensive ‘innovations’ that are either loved by the older people who are meant to use them or dismissed as a waste of time.

Historical properties that have been turned into care homes can offer a wow factor that makes you feel very grand, but design-wise they don’t always provide the most practical accommodation. What they do teach us, however, is that the opportunity to be surrounded by an old-world feel can be very alluring, particularly in the case of people with dementia for whom older properties can offer familiarity in styles, smells and layouts, combined with endless possibilities for reminiscence, that are hugely beneficial.

More modern homes can come with all kinds of innovative facilities, including nail bars, café’s, shops, cinemas, gyms and wi-fi zones. All well intentioned of course, but I wouldn’t want such facilities to replace encouraging residents to go out into the wider community to experience social interaction, travel and new sensations. Ultimately I also wonder if some of these ‘innovations’ are more for staff and visitors than the residents. I vividly remember back in my days of singing in care homes, doing a gig in a nursing home’s cinema and the staff telling me that the residents never went down there and actually didn’t really like the room.

For me, however, there are some elements to creating a desirable environment for an older person that apply to pretty much any type of property. Top of that list would be bringing the natural world into our buildings. Mother nature has given us wonderful light, beautiful plants, birds, wildlife and even weather that can offer our senses something unique all year round. So for me sun rooms, conservatories and large windows are essential when designing buildings for older people, and of course easy access to outdoor spaces that will provide an even more intimate experience of the natural environment and the chance for some al fresco living.

One day you can be sat in a conservatory snoozing in the warm sunshine, the next day you could be listening to the pitter patter of raindrops. You can get closer to weather you wouldn’t necessarily want to go out in either, like watching snow falling on the roof or icicles forming over the windows. Natural light also gives a wonderful feel-good factor that is priceless for wellbeing. The only caveat with regard to lighting is thinking carefully about how light reflects around a room, and how that can impact upon someone with dementia, as I wrote about here.

Of course artificial lighting will always be necessary, but for me you can make an environment cosier if you replace glaring over-head lights (that feel a bit like a hospital) with subtle side lighting that operates on a dimming system, so it can be adjusted if more or less light is required. There are also some wonderful lighting solutions that mimic daylight. I once visited a care home that had a ‘beach’ room, complete with deck chairs, sand and ‘sunshine’ lighting. Alternatively, you can use the warm and soothing effect of a fire to give a room ambience and a home-from-home feeling – in a safe and secure way of course.

Harnessing the power of the natural world can go beyond just lighting however. I’m a big believer in having plants, especially growing fruits and vegetables, indoors – many older people love gardening and by bringing the garden indoors, you can make that an all-year-round activity. Incorporating a greenhouse into a design for a care home or day centre, as part of the main building not as a standalone in the garden, would also potentially fuel activities in another area that is essential to daily living – the kitchen.

How often when you have house guests does everyone end up congregating in the kitchen? In my family it’s the way it has always been. So for me the place where food and drinks are prepared, cooked and eaten is the hub of any home. Clearly you can’t have industrial-style kitchens accessible to residents in a care home, but you can promote independent living by providing adapted kitchens that enable residents and visitors to make their own drinks or snacks.

Indeed assistive products exist for just about every facet of daily living, from eating to bathing and sleeping, but I would argue that profiling beds and assisted bathrooms are still best delivered as discretely as possible to avoid that dreaded ‘hospital’ feel. I still vividly remember how actively a deputy manager at one of dad’s care homes campaigned to persuade the management to install wet rooms, which when we finally got them proved to be a revelation, particularly for residents who were terrified of being hoisted into a bath. Proof that how buildings are designed and equipped is vital in helping with good care provision.

The environment you live in isn’t just about what you can see either. Heating is essential, but carefully regulated systems that offer gentle warmth rather than blasts of heat are in everyone’s best interests. One care home I visited even had a system for pumping fresh air throughout the property – an excellent idea from a health point of view.

Interestingly, on our own search for a home for my dad (which I wrote about here), the only environmental aspect that carried any real weight with us was location. Given dad’s love of the countryside we could never have considered moving him into a home that was in the middle of a town, which proves that like everything in life personalisation is vital.

Ultimately though, I would give the last word on designing buildings for older people to the generation that we are creating them for. They are the real experts, and with an ageing population I am sure that there would be no shortage of willing respondents.

Until next time...

You can follow me on Twitter: @bethyb1886

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Another world

As anyone with experience of dementia will know, it is a disease that plays tricks with the mind. Sometimes those tricks can be fairly innocuous moments where clarity of thought is absent. They can be mild and pass almost as quickly as they came, but for many people, my father included, they can come to define life during a particular phase of their dementia.

As a carer, developing an appreciation of and a strategy for helping with the effects of your loved one’s dreams, hallucinations, imaginings and other - almost movie-script-like - beliefs and visions isn’t easy. Short of setting up camp in the mind of someone with dementia, seeing what they see, hearing what they hear, and trying to make sense of it all from the point of view of someone with a brain that is working less than perfectly, I don’t think any of us looking from the outside in will ever truly grasp what dementia can make you see, hear or believe.

In my dad’s case, elements of reality were twisted into fantasy, leading to a bizarre period of a few years where he increasingly lived in a world that made absolutely no sense to us. We dubbed this 'eccentricity' at the time – only later learning that it was actually the workings of vascular dementia.

Dad started living in a world where he believed that he had formed ‘friendships’ or ‘feuds’ with certain people on TV. He never met them or contacted them, he just believed that he had a personal relationship with them that was, in his mind, either positive or negative. From there he progressed to believing that people in TV programmes were sitting in his lounge, and that what they were acting was really happening in his home. In the end we couldn’t even sit down in certain seats because ‘someone’ was already sitting there. He would put out food and drinks for these ‘people’ and we would be forbidden from touching it.

For dad, his dementia almost fed off of the TV – the people, scenes and actions were like fuel to his damaged brain, playing all kinds of tricks on him. I would be the first to admit that some of these tricks seemed to give him happiness and purpose, but others were much darker and more sinister, disturbing his equilibrium, his sense of worth, his understanding about where he was, who he was with and how his neighbours were behaving, and in the end it affected his ability to sleep, eat or even leave the house.

Of course, since we knew nothing about dementia, least of all that he had it, we fell into the classic trap of trying to reason with him. We told him countless times that what he believed wasn’t true. We would attempt to demonstrate that it wasn’t true, that it was all just in his imagination, often leading to arguments. We would clear away the food and drinks he put out for these ‘people’, which only made him more upset and frustrated. In his mind he couldn’t understand why we weren’t making a meal for, or conversation with, his room full of ‘guests’.

These were the sort of ‘guests’ that never left however. Week after week, month after month, their presence only got stronger. It was a bewildering, frustrating and ultimately extremely strange period in all our lives. Looking back now, I can see so many occasions when we went wrong, when we could have handled situations differently, but then of course hindsight is a wonderful thing.

So how do you avoid the mistakes we made and help your loved one through what they are experiencing? First of all look around their home: TV screens and mirrors are commonplace and entirely innocuous in most homes, but when someone is living with dementia they can become the source of much angst. Think about lighting (both artificial and natural sunshine) - the way it reflects off of objects or creates shadows can play havoc in the mind of someone with dementia. Patterns on furnishings, floor coverings, wallpaper or even plates and cups can also fuel the imagination in a very disturbing way.

Dealing with the tricks the mind can play in someone with dementia can be very exhausting and at times utterly baffling. When you have a loved one who has dreamt that they are lying on a beach in the Caribbean and now wants to go outside in their swimsuit in a freezing gale, it is very tempting to tell them not to be so ridiculous. Likewise, if they are spending the entire day terrified that they have murdered someone as a result of a nightmare that they have had (and are now too petrified to do anything, including sleeping), patience can run very thin on the ground.

Ultimately reassurance about anything troubling your loved one is vital, remembering that arguments are futile and very counterproductive. Avoid contradiction since it will often make the situation more distressing. If possible, encourage the person with dementia to talk about what they are experiencing and make sure that you listen carefully to what they are saying. From this, try and gain an insight into what is happening to them and think long and hard about how you could implement changes within their environment or routine that might alleviate what they are seeing, hearing or believing. Think about keeping a log of their experiences – are they connected to a particular time of day? Consider vocabulary issues too - is what your loved one describing to you not so much what they are seeing, but their description of something that they cannot remember the correct word for? Finally, eliminate any illnesses, emotional disturbances, medication side-effects or problems with vision that could be contributing to what they are experiencing.

Stepping inside the world of someone with dementia often takes courage and resilience, and never more so than when you are dealing with a situation that, whilst it is the centre of your loved one’s life, you cannot see, hear, touch, smell, taste or feel it yourself. As someone who knows and loves them, however, you are uniquely placed to help them through a huge challenge for you both.

Until next time...

You can follow me on Twitter: @bethyb1886

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Getting technical

How many times have you forgotten your pin number or tried to work out what an abbreviation in a text message means? How often have you cursed technology for presenting you with what appears to be an insurmountable problem, declaring that we were all better off when we only had pens and paper?

Imagine then if you can only remember a life of pen and paper, and modern technology is an alien concept. For people with dementia, an abbreviation in a text message could remain utterly unfathomable permanently. Having to remember a pin number could end your ability to go out shopping with a card that in theory provides access to your money, but only if you can remember those magic digits.

As dementia progresses, telephone calls can become problematic because you need visual clues to be able to communicate to the best of your ability. Even trying to operate a TV remote can leave you frustrated and bewildered – so many channels, so much choice… maybe too much choice. The world can become an increasingly isolating and unfamiliar place when your mind no longer helps you to process information that the rest of us take for granted.

Many of these problems stem from living in a faceless society. We communicate less and less in person – if an email or text message will suffice it is often quicker and easier. We use numbers to keep our cards secure when once a simple signature would have been all that was needed to purchase goods. Many shops now expect you to serve yourself when you want to buy something. We are encouraged to bank online, but again this involves remembering the right answers to get through the security. Even making a phone call regarding a service can leave you wading through those dreaded selection menus, unsure of which button to press – if you can even recall what all the options were.

How do people with dementia cope? The answer is with great difficulty. If you are fortunate enough to have a loved one caring for you, much of the burden of running the affairs in your life (be they financial, social, or simple household matters) will, over time, fall to them, which in the case of financial affairs often means going through the complex processes of Power of Attorney (if you are able to facilitate this). That is not to say that you necessarily want to lose control over your life, just that the systems within our shops and services are not, at present, widely adapted to help people with dementia to remain in charge of their affairs.

Thankfully the Dementia Friendly Communities initiative is involving leading companies in trying to understand how they can modify their systems to help people with dementia. Let’s hope they can grasp the scale of these problems, the debilitating effect they can have on daily life, and find ways to modify how they run their businesses to help people with dementia to keep their independence for longer.

But what about the more basic problems like using the telephone and operating the TV? Making devices simpler is one solution, but ultimately someone with advancing dementia will often come to rely on those nearest and dearest to them to help with their communication and entertainment needs. Proof, if it were needed, that nothing can really beat human contact.

So can technology and dementia ever really be happy bedfellows? You might think that is unlikely, but as awareness of the needs of people with dementia grows, there are plenty of companies looking to innovate products that can provide real 21st century solutions that benefit rather than baffle people with dementia.

Of course they won’t work for everyone – after all the best dementia care is about focusing on the individual and what is right for them. It's also unlikely that one piece of technology in isolation will be useful for a person throughout their entire life with dementia. Nevertheless, I think my dad would have benefited from a little technology in his life, not least a device that could have alerted us when he collapsed at home, and prevented him being left on the floor all night. Equally, technology that could have provided the kind of support and peace of mind that might have kept him living in his own home for longer would have been a plus point.

So, sometimes technology can be a positive thing for people with dementia, and indeed sometimes it is actively embraced by those living with the disease. Take for example how some very inspiring people who are living with dementia are communicating their journey through blogs and social media. It always reminds me that for everyone I meet who tells me they don’t understand social media and "could never blog" there are some people, facing huge challenges with cognition, who find a way to break down those barriers and get their stories out there. For them, getting technical is a lifeline, and for us it means we can learn from the REAL experts in dementia.

Until next time...

You can follow me on Twitter: @bethyb1886

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Be kind to each other

There is something incredibly simple, natural, easy to deliver, easy to comprehend, wanted, needed and with a huge power to heal that I believe everyone desires when they interact with a fellow human being. It’s almost indefinable, and yet when you are touched by it you know you have been. It can be momentary and yet be remembered forever. It costs nothing, and yet is priceless. It is called compassion.

When I say we all desire it, I would add that there are times when it is more important than mere desire, it’s essential. When we are at our most vulnerable, emotional, confused, in pain, frightened and fearful of the future, then it can be the ultimate medicine for bringing calmness and serenity, security and comfort. Such power should surely make compassion the cornerstone of health and social care, and yet sadly that isn’t always the case.

In the wake of the Francis report into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, I heard one commentator say that compassion was unachievable in the NHS.  Another ‘expert’ claimed that he didn’t believe staff could be automatically expected to be compassionate, and concluded by saying that he didn’t believe you could teach compassion. So just how do we inject this vital quality of understanding, empathy and love into the way we care for people?

After the gross negligence found within Mid Staffs, and the appalling way it was allowed to happen, and continue to happen, until many hundreds of patients and families were affected in the most devastating way, it could perhaps be easy to conclude that all hope is in fact lost. Compassion wasn’t on the radar of the staff who allowed those patients to suffer, and die, in such horrific circumstances, and you cannot help but wonder how many other NHS trusts have harboured employees responsible for similarly negligent practices.

Certainly the systems of regulation leave a lot to be desired if such catastrophic failings can occur, and a fundamental re-evaluation is urgently needed of how we care for patients across health and social care. Organisational change will certainly result, in some form or another, from the findings of Robert Francis QC, but what about on a personal level – when did healthcare stop being about one human being genuinely and sincerely caring for another?

In my view care isn’t defined by how many pills you can give someone or how you can cut them open, however important both those approaches may be for an individual’s treatment and recovery. It is how you treat that person on a personal level every time you see them, every time they need your help (even if that is the twentieth time of asking in the last hour) and every time you go to them to give them something or do something for them, even when they may appear hostile or indifferent.

By putting yourself on the same level as the person you are caring for, seeing the world through their eyes, and adjusting everything you do or say as a result, you are being compassionate. You are putting their need to be understood and shown love above your need for speedy completion of a task. Ultimately it is about treating that person, who you’ve possibly never met before and may never meet again, as you would wish to be treated yourself.

I believe such qualities, if they aren’t immediately apparent within a person are, generally speaking, something that can be taught by those capable of setting that example. Simple observation of compassionate care in action, explanation of the principles above, role-playing situations, and finding that point within an individual that touches their heart and soul is what will show most people the need for a compassionate response within their work. Give them the freedom to express that compassion and voila, you have compassionate care.

Many of the structures within health and social care actually directly preclude the delivery of compassionate care. We put staff under huge pressure, give them unmanageable workloads, put paperwork before patients and fail to allow for the need to stop, take stock, approach someone with a compassionate attitude and give that person the time they need with their patient so that both the professional and the patient has had a meaningful interaction.

Of course I would be the first to acknowledge that some people do not have the ability within them, no matter how much time you invested in them, to be compassionate in their care. They are the people for whom the Francis report needs to herald a change of career. I have seen for myself (and wrote about it here), what happens when someone who is a registered nurse, and yet doesn’t have a caring bone in her body, is allowed to manage a care home of extremely vulnerable and frail people with dementia. The outcome of that decision was, ultimately, my father’s death. That situation isn’t just reserved for social care settings either. She could just as easily have been a nurse on a hospital ward – at Mid-Staffs there were many like her I suspect.

I don’t, however, feel that all hope is lost. I saw compassionate care given to my father on many more occasions over his 19 years with dementia than I ever saw practices or interactions that I considered unacceptable. Whether in care homes, hospitals, primary care or support services, we met some amazing people, dedicated and compassionate, doing the very best they could in often extremely difficult circumstances.

So what does the future hold for compassionate care within the entire health and social care systems?  I remember at a conference last autumn I was chatting with a colleague who pointed out that so much in society could be improved by simply showing kindness to each other. So simple, so vital, and so undervalued. Maybe in the wake of the Francis report those who control our health and social care services, and those who deliver that care on the frontline, will look again at whether what they do is compassionate and if it isn’t, why it isn’t.

Until next time...

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Joined-up thinking

When I last wrote about social care funding (Why are we waiting?), I implored our policy makers to produce a workable solution to end the uncertainty many people face about how they will pay for care. The recent announcement by the government that introduced measures designed to stop families having to sell their homes was generally welcomed, but so much more needs to be done to change the face of social care in England.

I have never understood, and I don’t think I ever will, the way in which we have managed to compartmentalise healthcare and social care. To me they are pretty much one of the same thing. Good social care alleviates the burden on the healthcare system. When people are cared for well within the social care structure, whether that is in their own home, or in a care home, they place less of a burden on the health service, freeing up beds in hospitals and appointments in clinics.

Yet while we have a National Health Service for healthcare, social care is a means tested system where financial goalposts can be moved by politicians and where, even under these latest proposals, so-called accommodation costs, such as food, heating and paying for a room in a care home are not part of the cap. So even though someone may need to be in a care home to receive the care that they require, for their wellbeing and safety, and certainly need to eat and keep warm in order to remain in good health, they are still expected to pay for that if they have the ability to do so (the cost will be around £12,000 in April 2017).

That would be perfectly fair enough, if only the same applied to healthcare. Yet that is free at the point of need, something I must add I wholeheartedly support, but I just feel that social care has become the poor relation. You can go to hospital, be given accommodation and fed, and yet surely we should be supporting people to avoid doing that precisely because acute care facilities cost so much and are under huge pressure, not to mention the negative effects on patients from lengthy stays in hospital.

Then there is the question of what happens to people when they enter what I would call the social care funding no-mans-land. Their need for social care has been identified, but the assessments need to take place and appropriate care sourced. Imagine what might happen to someone who doesn’t recognise their own need for care and doesn’t want to pay, or someone who knows they need care, cannot afford it, and must wait on one of these drawn out assessments of their finances to confirm that. In that intervening period they could easily hit a crisis point and end up needing our healthcare system to pick up the pieces, usually at great expense.

Then there are those who need social care when they are facing the end of their life. Hospices are wonderful, but there aren’t enough of them and they are generally focused on cancer patients. They don’t usually help people with dementia for example. So you could end up dying in hospital, something most people would never want to do, at home with less than adequate care if you don’t have a package of care funded, or die waiting for a bed in a care home to be found and funded. These ‘solutions’ are hardly something for our society to be proud of at this most sensitive time in someone’s life.

How can we ethically allow social care to continue to be the poor relation in the ‘care’ family? Health and social care should be a partnership, yet when it comes to financial demands, so often it is a competition to see which side can palm off their patient onto the rival just to ease their own budgetary constraints. As the desire for CHC funding has escalated, many people have even started up businesses to advise families on how to appeal, even after a relative’s death, against a decision to deny funding.

Then of course, like so many aspects of the ‘care’ family, you are also subjected to the postcode lottery when it comes to funding. Local authorities it seems are at liberty to interpret the rules on someone’s care needs differently, so while in one location you may be assessed and receive full funding for care, in a neighbouring authority the outcome may be very different.

Admittedly you can now argue that at least by April 2017 people won’t, in theory, have to sell their homes to pay for care, but for everyone currently within the social care system, and those about to enter it, that is fairly cold comfort. The social care system isn’t fixed by such a relatively narrow adjustment in the parameters, and many families still face uncertain futures.

Yes, you may get to keep the family home, but what you will go through to find care, fund it and live with the consequences of a system where standards are often not what they should be means that you are hardly likely to be celebrating from the rooftops. Ultimately social care needs an overhaul that transforms this fractured system and makes it equitable to healthcare. It requires joined-up thinking on a vast scale and a recognition that, with an ageing society, social care has to be amongst the very greatest priorities that politicians of all persuasions have.

Until next time...

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Home alone

Imagine that every morning when you wake up, you are unable to get out of bed without the help of a carer. You might wake up quite early, needing the toilet or wanting a hot drink, but you live alone and rely on people who are paid to come and look after you.

You may wait many hours for help to arrive. It may never come if the home care agency don’t have enough carers on duty, or it may be much later than you expect because your carer has been delayed helping other people. In that time you may soil yourself, become dehydrated, or attempt to move around and end up falling, potentially breaking a bone and ending up in hospital, the shock of which, in someone who is elderly, could bring about premature death.

This is the reality that many single, vulnerable, elderly people with physical or mental health problems face every day. When care does arrive it can often be rushed, with the carer unable to give all of the help that is required. Imagine if you had to choose between being washed and dressed, helped to the toilet, fed or given your medication? You need assistance with all of those tasks, but your carer only has time to help with some of them, leaving you hungry or dirty as a result.

For many people who live alone, the carer that comes in to help them may be the only person that they see or speak to all day, and yet there is no opportunity for meaningful interaction. This is a system that is almost de-humanised, where the people who need care are effectively on a conveyor belt, and carers are operatives in a factory environment where output, rather than quality, is king.

Over the course of just a few weeks of home care you may see many different faces, each time having to try and explain (if you are able to) what you need and want. The turnover of staff is high because this is low-paid, often poorly trained work, where staff are put under immense pressure to meet deadlines, rush care, make stark and extremely unpleasant choices about what they realistically have time to do for someone, and where every shift leaves them feeling physically and mentally exhausted. Many carers often end up completing tasks in their own time, such are the time constraints enforced by their employers.

Morale is low, carers feel undervalued, and those who chose this type of work precisely because they genuinely wanted to care for vulnerable people feel utterly let down by a system that is run around two defining factors – the time on the clock and the money being paid to the home care provider.

Don’t run away with the idea that having home care is a cheap option for the most vulnerable, elderly citizens in our communities, because it isn’t. Universally however, most people would rather remain in their own home than move into alternative more supported accommodation or indeed into a care home. I would argue that everyone has the right to do that, whenever practically possible, and therefore in a compassionate society this should be supported, not just financially for those who need assistance paying for it, but from a cultural point of view as well.

The culture that defines how we care for older people in the UK is still one where we don’t value the person enough. As a society we don’t make provision for elderly people to exercise choice and be supported to do that, we cut corners because we think it doesn’t matter, we try to rush those who are naturally slower than they once were, we are incapable of seeing beyond ‘doing the basics’ and we ignore the need every human being has to feel cherished, loved, cared for, appreciated and listened to.

It can be very easy to blame the carers on the front line who have the day-to-day contact with our vulnerable elderly people, and there are certainly those within this line of work who should never be caring for anyone, least of all those in greatest need. But I believe that so much of what is wrong within the care system, and home care in particular, is about what happens within the companies that provide care and the authorities who commission it.

Many home care providers will say that they don’t get paid enough by councils (whose budgets have been squeezed in this area) to provide the care that people need. Councils will say that for the money they are paying, they expect far better for the people they are responsible for supporting. The real truth probably lies somewhere between these two viewpoints, but what I always find staggering in these debates is how the needs and the voices of the people who are on the receiving end of this care are generally never heard, and even more worryingly, those who are making the decisions often have no real appreciation of the situation that these people are in.

Of course we know of the cases, all too common, where home care has gone so catastrophically wrong that someone has died as a result of neglect. Yet all over the country, every day, neglect is happening, often not with immediately tragic consequences but with the slow-burn, saddening effect of reducing the lives of people who were once vibrant, hard-working, energetic and valued, into something that is a daily struggle to exist, a struggle that for many may not feel like one that they want to keep fighting for.

I couldn’t be a home care worker, simply because I could not cope with leaving people who needed me, at the same time knowing that if I stayed longer I let someone else down. It is an impossible situation. Home care is a vital resource that a compassionate society should value. Carers should be well trained, well paid and with enough colleagues to give our cherished elderly the help that they need in a time frame that they can cope with.

This is a job where you care for people with very high dependency and often multiple problems – it should be a profession with a far greater standing than it currently has. Ultimately care should be about helping people to flourish, live their lives well and feel happy and fulfilled. It should never be about losing dignity, being lonely, frightened, misunderstood, neglected and potentially an early death. If you offered anyone the ‘services’ in that last sentence, they would never sign up for them.

Until next time...

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