Partner not dealing well with my father's dementia

I’ve been through this and there’s no tight or wrong way get in touch with a social worker and they may point you in the right direction. Ask for help.

Sometimes it does take some sort of crisis to happen before the situation improves, Awesomegranny. I’ve heard of more than one case where the person has persistently refused carers - wouldn't even let them in, though care was desperately needed, because ‘There’s nothing wrong with me!’

My own mother still honestly believed that there was nothing wrong with her even when she could no longer even make herself a cup of tea.

I do hope the situation improves for you soon - it’s such a stressful and worrying time. ?

So sad for all involved. including the dad, and his partner, and daughter, and all others.

We should all have a good think about what we want for our future- and for this eventuality, if and when it comes.

I have made my plan. Enough said.

It now appears because the LPA is still waiting to be granted, no one will take any notice of myself or brother and will only take notice from my father’s partner who has been reluctant to admit she can’t cope and care won’t happen ! Now have to cope with Dad’s partner in melt down and saying she will pack her bags and go which could be for the best. Just hate having to wait until crisis point , partner should of asked for help months ago when I first suggested getting caters in!
Lesson to everyone get a power of attorney in place while you’re still fit

FarNorth

^Since the partner is not next of kin, and the daughter is, I would have thought this was the obvious choice - or would you rather the LPA was awarded to someone who has already said they don’t want to be involved with the fathers’ care ?^

The father has to be in sound enough mind to agree to the LPA so he is also able to decide who will have responsibility for it.
If he wants it to be the partner, it is up to her whether she agrees.

The father can also designate who is next of kin for his health and care. It doesn't have to be an actual relative.

I realise all of that. But an LPA compels the attorney to act in the best interests of the donor. My point was in relation to the fact that the partner has said she does not want to be his carer, and even though he has only recently been diagnosed and hasn’t yet had a formal assessment of his care needs, she has already jumped to the option of full time care for him. That’s in her best interests, not his, so if she currently had his LPA in place she would already be in breach of it.

I’m amazed at the number of posters who are putting the needs of the partner before those of the father, and criticising the OP for advocating for her father who is in a very vulnerable situation.

I’m not criticising the partners’ decision - she obviously recognises that she’s not cut out for what’s ahead, and that’s fine. She’s been honest from the beginning. But that being the case she’s effectively put an end to the relationship as they have known it for the last twenty years and everyone now has to be practical with the focus on a proper assessment of fathers’ care needs. If she isn’t prepared to consider his best interests over her own then she should step back and let the family sort it out.

My apologies. I don't know if I misunderstood/ misread your post or whether I picked it up from another poster who'd seen your figure and assumed it was for complete care. Thank you for clarifying.

Baggytrazzas

HI, just a thought - does " common law husband/wife" still have any legal standing? If it does then the partner may very well have some legal rights. As previously mentioned by others, the whole position needs to be run past experts before any decisions are made regarding who is entitled to what and who is responsible for what. The father may also have left a will favouring his partner.

If the father owns the property outright then the whole value will be taken into account, even if there’s a will. No one is forced to sell their property to pay for care, and if his partner wants to stay in the property after he goes into a care home, they can apply for a deferred payment agreement - the LA will place a charge on the property with the land registry so that when it is eventually sold, they can recover the care costs. Most authorities charge a fee for this service and the accruing debt attracts interest, meaning that there will be less in the funding pot for his care than if the property were sold immediately. And if the partner owns her own property the LA may refuse a deferred payment scheme as she would not be made homeless by the sale of the property. A will doesn’t stop the property being sold eventually to cover care costs, even for married couples.

Something else the OP might want to look into is whether her father and his partner have any joint savings above the limit, because 50% of those would be taken into account too - if memory serves, I think they allow a joint figure of £47,000 and then 50% of anything above that would be taken into account. The calculation may have changed as this was a while ago.

MargotLedbetter

TeacherAnne, that's a brilliant suggestion. Yes, OP needs to go and look after her father in his home for at least a fortnight and probably more like a month while his partner has a break. It's impossible to understand what a carer has to do and the limitations on their freedom unless you've been in their shoes. After this OP will have a clear idea of what support her father will need.

Interesting to hear confirmation from others of what council home-care involves in their area. I think anyone expecting a round-the-clock team of carers for £600 a month is in for a shock.

I'm reminded by this conversation of a former neighbour of ours, a retired nurse, who would occasionally disappear for a fortnight to work and would sometimes return looking like a ghost. Those were the fortnights when her agency sent her to look after a 'mildly demented' client who turned out to need 24/7 care and wandered at night. She talked of sleeping on a mattress on the landing so that she could prevent the elderly client from falling down the stairs on her watch after one stint. I think the agency she worked for charged around £1000 pw, not all of which went to her.

I think that figure was quoted in one of my posts, but I didn’t say it was for round the clock care. £600 monthly was for a local authority care package of carers three times a day and a disabled facilities grant supplying range of adaptations - this was supplemented with support from other family members. Once my relative needed more care than could be given at home they moved into a care home at a cost of over £4000 a month - the funding source being the sale of her home.

TeacherAnne, that's a brilliant suggestion. Yes, OP needs to go and look after her father in his home for at least a fortnight and probably more like a month while his partner has a break. It's impossible to understand what a carer has to do and the limitations on their freedom unless you've been in their shoes. After this OP will have a clear idea of what support her father will need.

Interesting to hear confirmation from others of what council home-care involves in their area. I think anyone expecting a round-the-clock team of carers for £600 a month is in for a shock.

I'm reminded by this conversation of a former neighbour of ours, a retired nurse, who would occasionally disappear for a fortnight to work and would sometimes return looking like a ghost. Those were the fortnights when her agency sent her to look after a 'mildly demented' client who turned out to need 24/7 care and wandered at night. She talked of sleeping on a mattress on the landing so that she could prevent the elderly client from falling down the stairs on her watch after one stint. I think the agency she worked for charged around £1000 pw, not all of which went to her.

Since the partner is not next of kin, and the daughter is, I would have thought this was the obvious choice - or would you rather the LPA was awarded to someone who has already said they don’t want to be involved with the fathers’ care ?

The father has to be in sound enough mind to agree to the LPA so he is also able to decide who will have responsibility for it.
If he wants it to be the partner, it is up to her whether she agrees.

The father can also designate who is next of kin for his health and care. It doesn't have to be an actual relative.

lemsip

She should give notice to the renters of her property and move out of your fathers house and back to her own! She doesn't want to be left with him does she....she doesn't love him then.

I'm not sure how anyone here could possibly know that the partner doesn't love OPs father. She could have moved out at any point over the last 20 years if she had wanted to. Staying for 20 years seems to me to indicate some level of affection at the very least.

lemsip - how do you know she doesn't love him?

She should give notice to the renters of her property and move out of your fathers house and back to her own! She doesn't want to be left with him does she....she doesn't love him then.

I priced up full time live in care for my mum about three years ago and it was more expensive than a care home! As mum wandered around the house, the carer would have been woken up and that added a huge amount to the costs. It might have meant having an additional Carer for the night hours so the daytime Carer could sleep. I also had to factor in extra care for two hours each afternoon when the Carer was entitled to a break.

As mum was self funding, I never managed to get an assessment of her needs, she was never assigned a social worker despite several phone calls from me. I managed to find out that the first level of care offered to funded people was two care calls a day, for half an hour each, is 23 hours with no support. Then an upgrade possibly to four half hour visits for meals and medication support before a care home would be considered.

However, in time it became unsafe for mum to live alone at home due to her aggression to me and two carers who I employed at weekends so I could have a break and her habit of going outside at night partially dressed. I lived close to mum as did my brother and sister so we were able to be with mum every day, I don’t know how I would have managed if I lived away. That’s when I reluctantly agreed to consider a care home, mum had lived independently for 5 years ( with increasing support admittedly) after diagnosis and for 2 more years in her lovely care home.

I certainly did not pack her off to a care home as soon as she was diagnosed. I took early retirement to look after mum and my sister eventually took voluntary redundancy to be her Carer for 20 hours a week. But once she no longer had any capacity to make safe decisions and had several falls, I knew it was time for 24 hour care by a team of carers.

The original poster has a great deal to think about and look into the practicalities of caring for her father from a distance, with or without his partner being there, it will be challenging.

Maybe you could go and stay with your dad for a couple of weeks while his partner goes away for a break, then you will see exactly what support your dad needs and can get some put in place.

Georgesgran

There is no such thing as a common law husband or wife.
It’s one of those myths.

HI, I don't think it is a myth in every case, I've lifted this from a random Solicitors website: Cohabitation Rights in Scotland
"Many couples live together but are not married or in a civil partnership. While they do not have the same clear rights as married couples or civil partners, cohabiting couples can be recognised under Scots Law in some circumstances. You can also have a legal agreement recognising your relationship drawn up to cover potential problems.

Section 25 of the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006 gives pointers as to what the court is to look at when deciding if there is cohabitation for the purposes of the Act. These are the:

Length of time the parties have been living together
Nature of their relationship during that time, and
Nature and extent of any financial arrangements in place during that time

It is irrelevant if one or other of the cohabitants happens to be married to somebody else."

I appreciate that it quotes Scots Law and I don't know where the family in question on this thread reside, but it may be that partners in long term residential relationships do acquire some rights in countries outside Scotland, and as I mentioned earlier, the father may already have made her the main beneficiary in his will.

So, even more need to take professional advice.

This is a really tricky situation and we only know one person’s version.

A friend of mine has a husband with dementia following a stroke. She contacted Adult Social Care to see what help might be available eg respite care, and the only suggestion they came up with was that she should do some voluntary work, to get out of the house. How was that supposed to help, when he can’t be left alone?
So there is another side to this situation and it is not for us to be judgemental.

No. I believe in Australia living together over a certain length of time does confer some legal rights, but if you're not married or civilly partnered then you have no automatic right to anything as far as I'm aware.

There is no such thing as a common law husband or wife.
It’s one of those myths.

HI, just a thought - does " common law husband/wife" still have any legal standing? If it does then the partner may very well have some legal rights. As previously mentioned by others, the whole position needs to be run past experts before any decisions are made regarding who is entitled to what and who is responsible for what. The father may also have left a will favouring his partner.

I don't know about other parts of the country but anyone here (Hampshire) expecting the LA to fork out for 24-hour home care has no idea.

MargotLedbetter, you are absolutely right. They will offer ways you can get round things without having care first with no understanding of dementia sufferers finding it hard to take on board new technology. When my mother was continually falling, she just didn't remember that the button on the wrist was to press for help. She could lay on the floor for hours and did as her partner/Carer was deaf once his hearing aids were out at night. Neither did she have any idea that the control centre was talking to her if she pressed it by accident.
Needs help taking tablets? Set an alarm. Erm, she can't work out what the alarm is for or how to turn it off! And yet, if you had a conversation with her she would look as if she understood (probably did at the time) and so the assessors went away happy despite what we said.

Sorry, two mammoth posts. I will shut up now!

Pammie1

MargotLedbetter

I am also imagining how it might feel to be the partner who has lived with and presumably helped look after the father for all these years — as someone's pointed out upthread, 20 years is longer than a great many marriages — and is now seeing the daughter (who lives at a distance, doesn't see her father very often and has apparently expected the partner to cope with 24/7 care and rarely be able to go out) file the LPA and take everything over. What a horrible position for the partner to be in. All the drudge work, none of the decision-making power.

Where is the evidence for this ? The OP says the diagnosis was recent and that his partner is the one who is saying she can’t cope and doesn’t want to be the carer. The OP isn’t forcing her to do anything, she’s looking out for her father. And if someone is diagnosed with dementia an LPA is essential before they lose capacity, so that their affairs can be managed. Since the partner is not next of kin, and the daughter is, I would have thought this was the obvious choice - or would you rather the LPA was awarded to someone who has already said they don’t want to be involved with the fathers’ care ?

Although the diagnosis was recent, he will have been showing signs/ deteriorating for some time and the partner will have been dealing with it. I think I posted early on about vascular dementia sometimes leaving sufferers volatile. In my uncle's case people had been commenting on the change to his personality for years before he was diagnosed.

I know from my husband's situation how difficult things can get when one person is the main carer but another holds the LPA. My husband was his mother's favourite and the one she called on constantly for support, but the LPA was in his older brother's name and big brother liked to remind my DH of that in petty and infuriating ways. He may have been managing their mother's affairs but he often did so in ways that cut my husband and the other siblings out of the decision-making process. Similarly in the OP's case, one party has all the legal standing and power, the other has been shouldering the responsibility of care. It can be an uncomfortable way of working.

You identify that the partner has no legal standing and also presumably no security of tenure in the home she's lived in for 20 years. Perhaps the partner has stayed with the father so far out of a sense of duty, love and commitment but I can perfectly well understand why she's called time on it. I imagine there have been conversations with doctors where they've discussed how things are likely to develop. Perhaps she's frightened or overwhelmed and that's informed her decision.

I don't know about other parts of the country but anyone here (Hampshire) expecting the LA to fork out for 24-hour home care has no idea.

It was meant in the context that the partner has gone immediately to the best option for herself

But she's lived with her partner for 20 years and as anyone who's ever lived with anyone with dementia will tell you, by the time the sufferer has reached the stage where they can't be left (which it sounds as if he's reached) they've very probably been deteriorating for years. It's likely that the diagnosis has just confirmed what she's know for some ages. So far from this being an immediate decision, as you suggest, she's likely had years supporting him — and through lockdown and Covid, too, when it was so difficult to get help. I can't think of any carers I know who haven't been left traumatised by the isolation of lockdown.

No idea how old the partner is and I don't think the OP has said, but she could be quite elderly herself. No matter her age, if she's had enough, she's had enough. Perhaps she needs a month or two respite so that she can make a decision away from her caring responsibilities. Constant care wears you down.

I imagine there are all sorts of things playing out in the background. We don't know whether the partner is the Other Woman: we don't know whether she and the OP have ever got on. We don't know whether she's been a great carer for the father or not. If she has, I'd suggest that she could be a fantastic asset and that maybe she needs to be appreciated and encouraged — because she's going to cost a a fortune in care costs to replace.

MargotLedbetter

I am also imagining how it might feel to be the partner who has lived with and presumably helped look after the father for all these years — as someone's pointed out upthread, 20 years is longer than a great many marriages — and is now seeing the daughter (who lives at a distance, doesn't see her father very often and has apparently expected the partner to cope with 24/7 care and rarely be able to go out) file the LPA and take everything over. What a horrible position for the partner to be in. All the drudge work, none of the decision-making power.

Where is the evidence for this ? The OP says the diagnosis was recent and that his partner is the one who is saying she can’t cope and doesn’t want to be the carer. The OP isn’t forcing her to do anything, she’s looking out for her father. And if someone is diagnosed with dementia an LPA is essential before they lose capacity, so that their affairs can be managed. Since the partner is not next of kin, and the daughter is, I would have thought this was the obvious choice - or would you rather the LPA was awarded to someone who has already said they don’t want to be involved with the fathers’ care ?

But you’re talking about 24 hour private care - I’m talking about local authority care at home, which does not take the property in which the person is living into account - you’re jumping to the most expensive option when there hasn’t even been an assessment of the fathers’ needs.

Only because the OP said her father was anxious when the Partner was not around. If the Partner is not going to be around 24/7, then if the father is not going to be anxious, he'll need someone around all the time. Also, purely from a deterioration point of view, the mind keeps better if it is stimulated. Long periods of time on your own can actually compound dementia.

MargotLedbetter

Nanna58

I do understand your feelings but as the spouse of someone with Alzheimer’s would just say this- it is very different dealing with this situation 24/7 than being a relative who can , if even for short periods , walk away. Just saying.....

Yes. I find the comment about the partner 'having shown her true colours' really offensive. My mild, clever, funny and loving uncle had vascular dementia and went through periods of being extremely angry and depressed and took it out on my aunt when no one was around to see. It was only when he broke her arm that she received assistance.

I grew up living with a grandmother whose Alzheimers cast a dark shadow over my childhood and ran my mum ragged. I would never condemn anyone for deciding they couldn't cope and bailing out. I wouldn't want to put anyone I cared about through it.

That was my comment and it wasn’t meant to be offensive. It was meant in the context that the partner has gone immediately to the best option for herself - full time care for her partner - which is not necessarily the best option for him, depending on how severely his is affected. The compassion here seems to be mostly for the partner, which to my mind isn’t right. No-one is forcing her to do anything she doesn’t want to do and she’s in the fortunate position of having her own property to move back to if and when it becomes necessary. There seems to be an assumption that the OP is resentful. I don’t think this is the case - I think she’s just trying to do her best for her dad.