Who should look after elderly aunt?

How is her mental state as she may not be able to rationalise
Things any more.also she is hanging g onto her perceived independence but she is very dependent on others. . The care at this age becomes more critical.. it’s all about keeping them safe ... and personal hygiene ,medical issues , nutrition etc.
My mum was adamant re care homes..no way ..and in the end I pointed out the positives and that it would be better for all of us not just her to know she is safe and well cared for.she agreed to try for a week which progressed to two and she never came out. It broke my heart to do it but it was for the very best reasons. I can’t say I enjoy seeing her institutionalised but it’s better than finding her alone is her house in a physical mess betweencarers visits.
However it’s nearly 6000 a month so you need money although the gov contributes with attendance allowance and nursing funding.

Lots of good advice given already, but may I suggest that you invite both your cousins to a frank discussion of the future?

As I understand you have your mother, a granddaughter and your aunt needing care to some extent. Your one cousin feels she is doing all she can at present for your and her aunt, and is hoping for more help from you and her sister.

What does her sister feel about the whole situation, and do they both realise that you are caring for your mother and granddaughter as well as your aunt?

Your mother is also their aunt, but are they just assuming that you as her daughter take care of her without help from them?

Have they parents who need help too? Or who you visualize may need help soon?

It would be a pity if your relationship with your cousins was to suffer, so perhaps stating that as you see it, you all three have a problem in common might help.

Your aunt needs to recognise her situation and, if she is not willing to pay for carers coming in, then the only alternative will be a care home. Families do find it difficult to cope long term providing not only care but all the other aspects of maintaining someone at home. I worked in social services and saw both the stress and guilt suffered by families. My view is that rather than carry on with what people feel is a duty and becoming a reluctant carer it is far better to support the person to move into a good care setting. Visiting often to give your support will make for much happier memories than the ones you would have if the caring becomes a burden. You sound as if you already have too much to cope with without taking on any more.

4allweknow, Such a well written sensible comment. It is very easy to feel real bitterness towards the person you are supposed to care for, also loosing out on your own family is very distressing. I lost the chance to be with DD1 at the birth of her child and eventually even simple things like a trip to the shops became a real problem. Make a fuss, get any agency involved, local charities can help (we had a lovely one local to where we lived that offered day care and links to a well run 'sitting' service so we could go out for a few hours). Our saving was a small local Care home that had a comfortable 'country house' atmosphere. We found it by accident and only towards the very end of our relative's life, but thankfully we did find it.

I do sympathise! My aunt was also my godmother and I loved her very much, but she lived 90 miles away and when she moved back to the town where she was born, to be near her younger sister, her sister didn't want to know, and rarely visited her. She developed dementia and had a bad fall, breaking her hip and was stuck in hospital, bed-blocking. She wasn't able to look after herself, even though she was only in her early 70s she needed a full-time care-home. I had recently had a baby and couldn't go dashing up and down, but I did manage to find her what I thought was a reasonable care-home, but I wasn't able to go and visit very often and my other aunt and my two cousins didn't really bother to go and see her very much, even though they were on the spot. I felt so guilty about not being able to keep an eye on her and visit her, but it just wasn't feasible. I still feel guilty now.

The elderly refusing care is a difficult thing to deal with. My mother, who had dementia, refused to move in with us and needed care. Daily help going in to give her her meals on wheels and clean a bit was enough for a while. And I went in every day or two to shop and check up. She was no longer able to go out, no longer washing and dressing and refusing the council help to bath her. She also began to refuse medication she needed, throwing it at me when I went in. I had got Power of Attorney while she was still able to give it. A living in carer didn't work out. Eventually she was in a bad state because of not washing, would go out of her house in the night and scream and shout so neighbours would call me,. did dangerous things like put the electric kettle on the gas and needed to be treated in hospital. From there she accepted going into a home. It was just lucky she didn't have some bad event before that. She'd always said she didn't want to go into a home but there was company there. They took all her pension and savings for the expensive weekly fees. I still felt I had to visit most days to make sure she was well-treated. I am an only child and my two daughters lived further away and one didn't want to see her grandmother like that so never visited.

I was a Carer for my Mum. She refused help from carers. I didn’t live near her and couldn’t support her every day. I called the social worker to do an assessment for her. The social worker told me to step back and she would realise that in fact she did need help. Eventually she accepted carers helping her too. She had dementia and when it became unsafe for her to live in her own home I was able to arrange for her to go into a care home near me. Not an easy decision to make but the safest. I recently had a neighbour who also had dementia and I used to help her with shopping and kept a check on her each day. Unfortunately she started to lose weight rapidly and started wandering outside during the night I had to contact her nephew. He wasn’t too helpful but evenly her nephews decided to contact social services. She too wouldn’t have help but Itge social worker talked to me because I knew more about how my neighbour was coping than her nephews who rarely came to see her. Eventually it was becoming unsafe for her to stay in her home so the family made the decision to place in a home too. So I think stepping back so your Aunt sees she isn’t able to manage as well. The social worker I spoke re my neighbour said they have ways to persuade people to accept help. I hope you get it sorted and can enjoy visiting your Aunt and she can enjoy your company.

It is seriously hard when our loved ones get old and ill and we have to become carers.
I didn't have a good experience of Social Services as a carer they seemed unable to accept the facts. Some of the things the WROTE (therefore can not be denied) was that there was nothing wrong with my caree. This was 30 years after early retirement on health grounds and a few weeks before a second heart operation. Caree was over 80 years of age. Those comments made me think Social Services were in need of help themselves!
I soldiered on for several more years until the death of my caree. I am now diagnosed with multiple physical conditions which will require many prescriptions costing a lot of money, and a total distrust of Social Services.
I just wanted to be a daughter not a carer

Thanks folks. Aunt is 100% up top no confusion dementia etc. LPA has been discussed and surprise surprise is not having it. I have it for mum so know how simple it is. Aunt also wont make a will.
FF 'you are enabling her to be awkward'. That makes alot of sense. I intend to be clear in my mind how much I will do and will try to communicate this whilst willing to work cooperatively.
GrandtanteJE65. Yes us 3 cousins need a broad discussion re Aunts future. Cousin2 keeps her head down, but she does go to work. Interesting point you make that my mum is also their aunt. Never thought about it like that. Both assume as I have done that mum is my responsibility. To be fair mum is genuinely independent at present needing little input. Not the case last year though when she was so poorly I didn't think she was coming out of hospital. No help was offered from cousins but never occurred to me to ask! I was still working part time, mum needed to go to doctor or hospital 3x a week and my DD who had a 4 month old baby took her when I couldn't. Crazy really looking back! Cousins parents are long dead.
Think it comes down to me always being a 'coper '. I was a lone parent for many years and helped my parents with my now deceased sister who had severe mental health issues.
Think at this point in life now I need a bit more balance and will try to communicate this more clearly. Thanks for listening to me rant!

Absolutely! She has her lines in the sand and you and your cousins have yours. Spell them out to her, then let her decide how to go from there. If she can cope alone with the reduced amount of family help she will, if she wants help from outside she will apply for it, if she can't cope and doesn't want help from outside, she'll fester in a dirty house until either she gives in or becomes mentally incompetent at which point someone will get help on her behalf.

If we are to accept that elderly people should have the full say about their care. A view I absolutely support. Then they have to make sensible decisions about how they will be cared for.

I think we need to be more prepared to spell the situation to them in words of one syllable and let them live, at least awhile with the results of their decisions.

In a case like this the lady has to be told that while a family member may able to pay a social visit now and again, there is no family member able to care for her, or render any other service like shopping or cooking. She should be told that unless she is prepared to pay, she will get no other help and she will have to do everything; shopping, cooking, cleaning, personal care herself. If she still refuses to pay. Let her experience it for a week or two to see how she manages.

As we go through life we have all been in situations where the decision we have to make, is not the one we want, but the one that is in our best interest, which is not at all the same. That realisation and decision making applies as much to older people like this lady as to younger people.

However, the reason some older people seem tight, is because they are terrified of finding themselves penniless and will not touch any savings because they are there to be used if a rainy day comes, except when you suggest the rainy day has arrived, they always say that this is only a light shower, what happens if a really rainy day comes. If someone is able to talk through the financial side it might help.

But over all, if this lady is in her right mind and after having all the consequences of her decisions spelt out to her , still refuses to pay for the care she needs. let her manage without care.

Trouble with Social Services or any other agency for that matter is that they see the person in isolation at that time. They do not see the person as they had been, what their abilities were. If someone is very capable and intelligent that can subtly mask the onset of forms of dementia for quite sometime. As a family you know what they are capable of on a day to day basis - outsiders often have not a clue. They are not the ones who have the same conversation every few hours, they are not the ones who find they have worn the same clothes for days or somehow smeared cat food all over the wall.
Also I do think that the extreme stubbornness to face up to the situation, that some people develop is a form of dementia. In our case it was a refusal to recognise that the house was unsuitable until a really nasty crisis. Thankfully he had organised the Power of Attorney 20 years previously (when he was an astute business man) however as a frail elderly old man he could not recognise his home was a death trap.

The problem is, the balance has to be struck between allowing people, regardless of age to make decisions about how they choose to live, even though we think it not in there best interests and protecting them from making seriously harmful decisions.

I some times think that what many families and medical and social workers lack is any skills in diplomacy and negotiation.

One elderly relative, whose care was my responsibility was encouraged to move into a care home by the Psychiatric nurse, pointing out that it was winter, the heating had been off in his house for several months and suggesting he went into a care home for a few weeks convalescence. As hoped, hr first decided to see the winter out in the care home and then, of his own volition decided to stay there permanently.

I know that isn't always possible, but I do think sometimes that a bit of thinking about approach and diplomacy would work where upsets, emotions and trying to force or shock someone into changing their mind won't.

Stand firm Honey.You are in a similar position to me in that I provide some childcare for my DGD ,and another baby is on the way,and have my 96 year old mum behaving in a similar way to your Aunt(I previously posted a thread on mum refusing help)She did finally grudgingly accept some help as she's become very frail with deteriorating eyesight,and we found someone to come a few hours a week -but we still did her shopping and took her out .But she made it as awkward as possible for the helper,fell out with her and now insists she can manage on her own.Except she doesn't, my brothers or myself go every day,and worry if we can't.Plus DH has an aunt in her 90s ,never married and no children,who does have a home help but relies on us quite a lot too.And that's set to increase as she becomes frailer if we're not careful.
I love the comment 'making a darned nuisance of herself by not being nuisance ' as someone previously posted !Because that's how I feel about mum.I love her dearly but as Westerlywind says I want to be her daughter not a full time carer.I can't. I also still work part time !Being honest I do feel increasing resentment when our elderly relatives say they want to 'independent ' but are anything but.Especially when financially they can afford to outsource some help.

Exactly what help does she need? Can she bathe/shower on her own? Do her own washing? Get dressed? Is there someone who could come in for 2 hours once a week to start.
Do you ever take her out? Just wonder if you could get her to a solicitor who might convince her to make a will and do lpa.
Is there a minister of religion she knows who might help?
I do find people will sometimes accept advice from male authority figures rather than family. And you might have just to be very firm with her.

How easy it is to say that you draw your line in the sand and leave the person to it if they will not accept help. My mother who lives with her partner in a mansion refuses to believe she (or he) cannot cope. She insists on sleeping 2 storeys up and her partner has to virtually crawl upstairs to take her food because she is often bed bound. She steadfastly refuses all external help and still offers to childmind for my grandchildren even though there is no way she could cope. I have her LPA but until she is with diminished capacity legally, I can’t over rule her. It’s a nightmare and I would love to walk away like she did with her father who I took in but if anything happened to her, I’d have to live with myself.

Sometimes ICHTB, one has to be cruel to be kind.

I railroaded an aunt and uncle into care. One had dementia, and the other seemed to be developing it. When, after one returned from hospital, we had to call for medical assistance twice a day for a week and one night the carer spent four hours trying to get my aunt upstairs and into bed. We had to tell SS that situation was unsupportable and they must find a care home for them immediately and I packed their bags and took them there.

They were traumatised at first and banished me from their sight for ever. Three weeks later when they had settled in, they asked my cousin why I hadn't visited them for a while and I returned and I remained their responsible relative for the rest of their lives.

I hated doing it, but they were not safe at home. We had had falls, problems with them trying to cook, despite carers coming in. So with the agreement of other family members I did it and took the flak.

Have you consulted a specialist mental care and LPA solicitor to see if there is any way you can activate the LPA?

icanhand - he doesn't have to. He can say no, and offer to get in some help. Ok it's not easy to say no but it's a heck of a lot easier than crawling upstairs several times a day if you're not a fit young adult yourself. The statement goes "sorry I can't". I told my own late mother my lines in the sand, what I was willing to help with and what would be too much. She accepted it and arranged help. She didn't originally want anyone there but after a few days alone she understood she needed someone. Basically I said I couldn't run two households, invited her to come and live with me, but with no more than two of her 15 cats. She turned down my invitation so she could get some more cats

As she lives in ‘a mansion’ perhaps they could afford a stair lift and some other aids to help them

M0nica and ReadyMeals, I'd love to be the big, bad wolf but her partner feels in a very precarious position so he struggles on. Every time he tries to dig his heels in, she threatens to chuck him out. Although they've been together a long time, it is her house and he just doesn't have the energy to start again. The falls lady came to see her and when we were talking outside the house, she asked if my mother had ever been diagnosed with a personality disorder. Nope, but I think she has Narcissistic traits.

Bluebell, I have investigated stair lifts and a lift. She won't pay because she isn't the one to have to get up and down the stairs. We call her house the fading mausoleum because it is literally falling apart at the seems. She won't pay for things to be done because she says her partner can do it. He has ankolysing spondiolitis (sp!), a fixed knee so it can't be bent and suffers with sleep apnoea but he is 2 years younger so, "Of course he should cope."
I am sure that eventually something will give but, right now, it's likely to be me with a gun.

ican, does she have anyone who would rush round to help her throw him out? Because in her position I'd say good luck to her trying. In fact I believe the law would support him. I remember finishing with a partner who had been living with me - only a matter of months - and he moved out but began harrassing me. The police were involved and had to check that he did in fact have his own place, because had he still been living with me, they would have had to insist I let him back in as it would count as legally his home for the time being.

ReadyMeals, no she doesn't have someone who would do that but he is a very honourable man and if she told him to go, he would. He does have a house a long way away but it is rented out on a long term let.
I can quite honestly say that my Mum is abusive to him and he is quite frightened of her. I find myself in the awkward position of trying to look out for his needs too because he is vulnerable.
The falls lady is coming back in February and she is going to try to get us help but she says her hands are tied by my mother's intransigence.
As I say, eventually something will have to give but until her partner has had enough, I'm in a holding position. She was a bloody awful mother in so many ways and I will not step in as carer. I will, however, see she is cared for properly if she lets me.

Well you know, Ican, you needn't feel disloyal to your mother for looking out for the partner's needs, because in doing so you're ultimately looking out for hers! Currently, she needs him! My (adult) children's paternal grandmother has spent years threatening to throw her partner out. He has stayed elsewhere for a while on a couple of occasions but she always takes him back. She's just always been a bit judgemental and stroppy. And besides, she's had a few strokes now, and can't walk too well, and she knows she needs him. They do have carers as well, but it's not the same as someone there, who is close to you, looking out for you. I am sure that secretly your mother knows this - it's all just a bit of emotional blackmail to get things her own way

Absolutely. She has always used emotional blackmail to get her own way and, quite frequently, violence. She still throws things but at least she hasn’t got the strength to physically attack now which is a blessing.

icanhandthemback, your situation is difficult, when there are partners, spouses, other siblings, they can undermine sensible decision making so difficult.

You really have my sympathy.