Lady Bader Ambassadors

Lady Bader Ambassadors

The Edith Ellen Foundation has launched their Lady Bader Ambassadors, a team of volunteer befrienders.

Our Lady Bader Ambassadors are predominantly current serving military personnel who are supporting veterans within their local care community, care homes and nursing homes.

Lady Joan Bader is the widow of one of our greatest war heroes: Douglas Bader, Britain's most famous wartime pilot whose story was told in the film Reach For The Sky.  During the Second World War Lady Bader worked briefly as a Red Cross nurse, and in 1982 Lady Bader established the Bader Foundation to encourage other people who had lost their limbs to rebuild their lives.

Our Patron and author of Behind Those Care Home Doors, Adeline Dalley, cared for Lady Bader during her final years prior to Lady Bader’s death in December 2015.  Lady Bader and her children have become supporters of The Edith Ellen Foundation and the work we do to promote change in the provision of care.

Kindness in Care, is close to the hearts of Lady Bader’s family as, Lady Bader, herself was subjected to neglect and abuse whilst in a care home.

In 2014, it was reported that Lady Bader had suffered a stroke and despite a clear and visual decline in her health, her condition had deteriorated horrifically.  Lady Bader had Sunken-eyed, with a livid bruise on her temple, and she seemed unable to speak or swallow, no one at her residential care home had taken action, despite the attempts by one nurse, Adeline Dalley, to seek medical treatment.

After intervention from the Family, Lady Bader was taken to hospital where the stroke was diagnosed doctors told her daughter that she was also dehydrated and severely malnourished.  Doctors advised the family that Lady Bader should not be returned to the Care Home.  This neglect had not in fact gone unnoticed Adeline, on a final shift before a week off, had raised concerns about Lady Bader with the home's manager, suggesting they order an ambulance as she believed that Lady Bader had had a stroke, only to be told that it wasn't necessary and they would wait a couple of days.

Lady Bader remained in hospital for ten days, during which time her daughter Wendy made a formal complaint to the Care and Quality Commission. It went nowhere.

The distressing incident is just one of many painful episodes Wendy and her two younger siblings, Michael and Jane, have encountered ever since they made the agonising decision to seek residential care for their mother.  In the three years since leaving her cottage, Lady Bader has been moved into four expensive residential facilities, none of which provided the kind of end-of-life care we'd all want for our parents.  Her latest move happened only this year, when Wendy found Lady Bader in bed in wet sheets one afternoon.

Her experiences led Wendy to contribute the foreword to Our Patron Adeline Dalley’s book Behind Those Care Home Doors, Adeline was the palliative nurse who had recognised Lady Bader’s stroke symptoms in the second care home, in the west of England.  Our Patron, in her book, reveals how she felt compelled to turn whistleblower after witnessing abuse upon abuse within the care system.  During her 16 years as a carer she has witnessed staff turning up drunk and charts being falsified.  On one occasion, she was told by a manager not to be tactile with residents because they were 'wages not friends'.

Adeline and Mrs Bader's family are now firm friends, united by a desire to highlight the iniquities in the system.  'I could never have imagined what I would go through with my mother,' Wendy, 62, says now. 'Sir Douglas, my stepfather, believed passionately in fairness, and went out of his way to help and encourage vulnerable people. 'I have no doubt he would be horrified at the treatment meted out to some of the most vulnerable in our society, and that he would have approved wholeheartedly of Adeline's effort to make this a thing of the past by writing this book.'

Like many, Wendy has struggled to witness the transformation of her once feisty, robustly independent mother into a frail, vulnerable invalid.  Lake many, Wendy has been stonily ignored by the Care Quality Commission.

Our Lady Bader Ambassadors will support both our elderly veterans and the community as a whole, to work in partnership with organisations to prevent abuse and neglect, and to ensure social inclusion for our elderly.