Old left high and dry

Had a phone call from a brother in law. His mother's home is on lockdown, no visitors because there is norovirus. She was okay yesterday. I hope they are keeping them all in their separate rooms.

www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2015/01/22/an-unreported-scandal-wages-so-low-they-re-illegal

Mainly care workers pay.
Notice it ties in with the fact that the number of staff in HMRC has been cut so it's difficult to prosecute. I do not understand why it has to be done on an individual basis. Surely if a company is underpaying one member of staff, it's probably doing it to many more because of the system they use.

With Councils having to make even more cuts the situation is going to escalate. In Wiltshire £30m worth of savings have to be made from April 2015. Over the past few years there has been a similar figure each year. Social Services have been 'protected' as far as possible so far....... but clearly this probably can't continue.
The Third Sector has been badly hit every year.
The ongoing lack of suitable community services to support the older population will continue to impact on hospitals and the vicious circle will continue.
This has been happening over a number of years and, so far as I can see, unless there is a dramatic change will go on in to the future.
All very sad.

There's a knock-on effect. Central government cuts payments to local government. Local government cuts grants to local charities which cares for the disabled and disadvantaged. Locally to me, the local branch of Age UK became insolvent and ceased trading, several other charities have already cut staff members and the services they offer as they head down the same route. With no social care framework in place, many older and/or disabled persons cannot return home and free up much needed hospital beds.

I'm astounded. the S.O. went to the hospital, supposedly to discuss with a doctor his mum's condition and instead he met a social worker who a] thought he was his mums husband b] hadn't even looked at her notes c] arranged the meeting to discuss her discharge [she has an infection, is incontinent and can't walk] and d] was only interested in how much money she had in the bank. Complete waste of everyones time and taxpayers money.

It's a fact that there have been huge cuts to council budgets and thus to support in the community for vulnerable people.

I posted a year or so ago about a "consultation document" my mum had received regarding changes to the Meals on Wheels service she receives. I think it was "FlicketyB" who had worked in the field of questionnaire design who agreed with me that, from the questions and options given, there was a strong indication that plans were afoot to reduce the service.

I wrote to the Council and to my mum's MP, Tim Yeo (who I later read had stood down after criticisms from his constituents). He merely replied that he was sorry I was dissatisfied with her current Meals on Wheels service (which indicated that he had not read my letter as I had said I and my mum were very happy with the service but were concerned about the possible changes to it).

The next thing was that the RVS wrote to say that, in effect, the Council had cut them adrift and removed its financial contribution towards providing the service. The cost then went up quite considerably - and I got the impression that some people would no longer be deemed eligible for assistance. My mum is 94 and fortunately she can well afford the additional cost, but I'm sure there must be people who have either had their service reduced or restricted or who would find the increased price puts them under financial pressure.

Sorry about the typing errors. It always upsets me and it is tragic that the situation is not getting better.

This hospital wher my brother dies had sign( no longer there) of a finger pointing left to THE ELDERLY. Later DH said the minute the ambulance turned left he was done for. He died of neglect a couple of weeks later.

I'm not involved at all really other than to hear what's going on. She has been in and out of hospital for about 2/3 years now and I must say the care she has had during that time has been fantastic. Although she was in one care home for a while which seemed very good, but when she went back there at a later date she begged never to be sent there again. It all seemed fine during the day but another relative called in one evening and the staff were in the staff room and calls from the patients seemed to be being ignored. Very worrying. Had she been suffering from dementia at the time she obviously wouldn't have been able to say she was unhappy there.

Sorry about that, Tegan. Hopefully you have all discussed all the options you think are available to you.
My mother in law has dementia and has been in and out of hospital and care home since Easter. I do not have any say, as there are two sons still alive. But I have heard that they are discussing 100% funding for her at last, as she cannot even get on her feet now.
No fun, is it?

The S.O.'s mother has been in hospital for several weeks and he is seeing her doctors tomorrow to discuss her condition. She has her own room, but obviously can't stay there indefinately. It'll be interesting to hear what options are put forward at the meeting.

That's terrible, annsixty. My husband died four months after being diagnosed with a brain tumour. He was sent to hospital after having tremors, which the GP thought was a stroke. He was going to be sent home before having a scan, as the doctor thought it was something to do with his ataxia. He hadn't even bothered to read the letter the GP sent.
After the scan, he was still sent home until another hospital rang up for him to go and have an operation. After that, he never wanted to go in hospital again, and he was looked after at home until he died.
The difference was that we were younger, could argue our corner and had an understanding GP. He had also written an advance directive, just in case he wasn't capable of telling people what he wanted.

I agree that it was a callous way to treat the couple. One reason was possibly because of the financial situation in which the NHS and social care find themselves now. However, I thought that if someone was given less than six months to live, they were automatically given DLA, or its new equivalent. Also, someone in that state should get 100% funding.

I notice that the DH has said it has given an extra £1.1 billion to councils this year to help protect social care services, in response to the Age UK review.

"Council funding is being cut by £11.3 billion

The "formula grant" is the main grant paid to councils by the government: under it, for every £1 received by councils in 2010/11, they got just 73.6p in 2013/14. This is before the effects of inflation are taken into account.

In total the government plans to slash grants to councils by £11.3bn by 2015/16.

More than 500,000 council workers have lost their jobs since 2010."

This is from an article on an austerity website.

I should add here he was sent to A&E as the GP thought he had had a slight stroke and he never came home again. I just thought it was so sad.

Some one mentioned geriatric wards on here.I remember long stay wards in my early days and while I realise they were expensive to run they did serve a need at the time. Last October a neighbour of mine was diagnosed very late with a brain tumour,he was 82. Within a few days of diagnosis,when given approx 2 months his partner was pressured to move him to a care home. She was given no help and no guidelines.She was in a state of shock from his diagnosis and "rushed" him into a care
home where he died after 4 weeks and 5 days and which cost £2800. I thought this was callous and uncaring.

Precious memories-guard them well.

Thanks, Soutra and Mishap. I am going to my son and his family after school, after I have been teaching my grandson all day, so I will not be alone most of the day. However, my husband died at ten to midnight, and I assume I will be back here then, unless it's too icy to walk back, in which case I can easily stay there. Our son was with me when he died; my husband delivered his son.
Thanks for caring.
Last week my grandson said he wanted to look at videos of granddad. I'll see if he remembers.

From me too durhamjen.

for tomorrow durhamjen -I will be thinking of you on your sad anniversary. Will you have someone with you or do you prefer to be alone with your thoughts and memories?

There used to be geriatric wards and even geriatric hospitals in the past, these were closed as it was found that much of the care was social care which could be taken care of in the community. Now there have been huge cuts in community care, and guess what one of the problems in hospitals are the number of elderly who can't be discharged because of the lack of care in the community. You couldn't make it up.

Councils are not doing much about social care because the government has cut their money every year since they came to power, soontobe.
The research is AgeUK, by the way, so presumably believable.

Mishap, my husband died three years ago tomorrow. In the last three weeks he had carers in four times a day, organised by the local hospice. They were on minimum pay, and worked in pairs, and were only supposed to be here for 15 minutes. I quite often used to ask them for help so they could stay a bit longer. There was no way they could have done what they had to do properly in 15 minutes.

There was something about this on R4 today - it would seem that the problem is in part explained by lack of ring-fencing of the money received from central government and intended for social care.

Social care, if done properly, is expensive. Carers have a tough time with 15 minute slots allocated sometimes and that often includes travelling time - they must be worn out - and they don't get paid much.

Not around here, they're not! You need a 4x4 just to drive down the road with all the potholes!

I may be way off. But are councils not doing so much about social care because the people that make the decisions are themselves younger? So they themselves are more concerned about say roads for example?

Gagagran

I agree with your post.

At the risk of 'here she goes again'. My father had excellent care from both the NHS and Social Services. He died 2 years ago this June. He was 94 years old, had dementia onset and osteoporosis. He died in Leicester Glenfield Hospital after having a Pacemaker fitted!!!! The point being his age was absolutely no bar from receiving neither appropriate NHS health care nor Social Services care. He was living in his own home and I will be eternally grateful for the service both he and our family received.

What I find so annoying about this scenario is Social Services are being cut 'fact'. Funding is being cut 'fact'. Then if you look at councils financial accounts some of those shouting loudest are holding huge sums of money in their bank accounts. Then you look at what they have spent their money on and you could cry. The bigger the council, the more cash it 'sits on', the bigger it shouts, the more I wonder how do they get away with it.. Councils up and down the country are to my mind not prioritising their spending and this is being unspoken of. Why I wonder. Is it politics at play? I think there are a lot of concerns with funding for Social Care from the government, yes but there are other parties who should be made to account for their actions too.

The absence of good social care has been a problem for a very long time - I left SSD 20 years ago nearly and it was a problem then. It is quite simply underfunded - end of.