Extra Care Residential Settings

We’d like to think that we can do it all on our own but in reality, dementia can be a tricky condition to care for. Caring for someone with a progressive condition like dementia should not be underestimated. According to the Alzheimer’s Society there are around 800,000 people living with dementia in the UK, two thirds of whom receive care in their own homes.

As dementia patient worsens they’ll become increasingly confused and less able to carry out basic day-to-day tasks including personal care. Frustration and irritableness usually follow when they are unable to remember or do things without help.  The person you knew and loved can become unrecognisable, and this can prove very challenging.

For many with parents who suffer from dementia home care is the ideal setting for our parent. Familiar surroundings reassure parents who are struggling to remain in the present and the presence of family members can provide added support. But for those of us caring for our parent at home the stress and work involved can become overwhelming.

Getting a break from caring is vital for you and for your parent. It’s hard to let someone else care for your parent whilst you rest - anxiety and guilt can creep in when you feel like you’re unable to look after their every need. Nobody’s perfect! ‘Carer’s syndrome’ can impact upon your quality of life as well as your parent’s – sometimes relying on family and friends for support can be the best option to ensure that your wellbeing isn’t jeopardised.

Don’t forget that if you’re caring for your parent you have the legal right to request an assessment of your own needs. The assessment is carried about by your local authority’s social services department who determine what help they can provide in order to maintain your own health and balance caring with work and family life. To find out more about carer’s assessments click here. Alternatively you can call the free Carers Direct helpline on 0808 802 0202.

There are also services and support groups local to you, the Alzheimer’s Society has a useful search tool.

There are a growing number of extra care residential settings if your parent is caring for their partner, where the person with dementia receives the support they need and can also live with, or close to, their partner. Housing Care and The Good Care Guide are just two places you can look for specialist accommodation like this.

In Case of Emergency

I’m not “being behind with the times” but it seems an opportune time to share this as it could essential save a life.  For those of you who have an iPhone are all probably already aware, but just in case its bypassed you I thought I’d share this information.

From an iPhone (I’m not sure if android have the same or similar) you can inform people of your medical history in an emergency. If you are willing to share people can access any information you’re willing to share about your medical history and next of kin contact details without the need to be able to unlock your phone?

It would be good for anyone that gets lost, and confused and ends up with a good Samaritan trying to help……….

In the lock screen mode of your iPhone in the bottom left is the ‘Emergency’ button – you need to click this, then select ‘Medical ID’ from the bottom left of the screen.

It has everything you wish to share including the ability to enter next of kin telephone numbers as well as all your medical details.

David Baddiel talks about Picks a rare form of Dementia

David Baddiel: Maybe it’s not OK to put my dementia-suffering father on camera – but the alternative is that nobody ever talks about this
http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-02-14/david-baddiel-maybe-its-not-ok-to-put-my-dementia-suffering-father-on-camera--but-the-alternative-is-that-nobody-ever-talks-about-this: 

A Shameful 'Act'

We have continuously reported on the case of Teresa Kirk who was jailed for seven weeks in a prison that once housed Rose West, all because she defied orders to bring her brother Manuel back from Portugal care home.

Article MCA Lack of Training and understanding

Article Mental Capacity Act

It is our sad duty to say that Manuel sadly passed away. 

Dejectedly, the court used secrecy laws that banned Teresa Kirk from even publishing his obituary. 

An astonishing story that has come to represent all that is wrong with Britain’s shadowy Court of Protection (CoP). A court so powerful that, until yesterday, Teresa was forbidden from placing an obituary notice to inform friends of her brother Manuel’s death.  The same friends that the state insisted he be closer to, the same friends that the state said he’d be happier living near rather than in his home country of Portugal!

British social workers who had decreed that her brother, who had dementia, must spend his twilight years in a Devon care home rather than the Portuguese idyll that she wanted for him in the country of his birth.

Teresa Kirk was sentenced to six months for refusing to sign legal papers giving social services control over the life of Manuel.

Still Teresa was barred from telling her shocking story, thanks to that draconian ruling imposed by the Court of Protection which decreed — even posthumously — that it was in Manuel’s ‘best interests’ for him to remain anonymous.

Even placing an obituary notice in Devon, where Manuel had worked at a hotel for nearly 50 years, would have put her at risk of being returned to prison.

In its earlier reports about Teresa’s battle to help her brother and her imprisonment, the Mail was prohibited from giving his name or saying they were brother and sister. He could only be described as a ‘man’ — and even the name of his pet cat, Tuna, could not be made public.

Only yesterday, with the lifting of the reporting restrictions by the Court of Protection, can the story of Teresa and her brother Manuel Martins finally be told.

Teresa, a retired accountant and grandmother of four from Brighton, recalled how her ordeal unfolded after she refused to sign the legal papers transferring responsibility for her brother’s life from herself to social services.

‘I was never going to sign the papers giving social workers the power to say where Manuel had to live. When I was a little girl, he would put me on his shoulders and run with me through the countryside near our parents’ home on the Portuguese island of Madeira.

‘Soon after he came to England to work, I followed him. We remained close all our lives and I was not going to abandon him to state social workers in his last years.

‘He would have become depressed in Devon without the sunshine. He loved the gardens and the warm weather where he lived.’

Even after she appealed the sentence successfully, she was unable to reveal any details that would identify her brother.

Social workers thought otherwise and had recommended that Manuel should be admitted to a care home in England, staying close to old friends. One of the planks of their argument was that he would be happier in the UK, where he had a cat.

This is one of those scenarios that I just simply do not understand, how can anyone who does not know a person have their best interest in mind?  A court system able to act in this heartless, incompetent and unsympathetic way.

I wholeheartedly agree with John Hemming, the former Lib Dem MP and family rights’ campaigner, who said: ‘The gagging order imposed did not protect Manuel, but only those who made the decisions to imprison Teresa and run an expensive exercise to try to get her brother back to Britain from a Portuguese care home.  ‘The CoP seems reluctant to relinquish control of people even in the afterlife. It’s time this court stopped hiding what goes on there.’