I’m not sure what I expect from this thread, but I’ll give as brief an outline of the circumstances as I can. My mother will be 94 next week. After her third fall in six months she was yet again hospitalised with a broken shoulder and another small brain injury. After two weeks she was discharged into a care home to recuperate. The care home was absolutely lovely, the staff lovely, and we could visit every day if we wanted to without difficulties. Her care there was funded by the NHS but after three months the funding stopped and she was pronounced fit to go home to her sheltered apartment. The problem was that she was clearly totally unable to live at home, even with carers several times a day, as she has deteriorated so much since the last fall, despite the fact that her shoulder had healed. We discussed the situation with my mother and she decided that she now needs to live in a care home as she really needs full time care. We approached the management with this in mind. The admissions manager made it absolutely clear that mother could only stay in that home if she had sufficient funds of her own to cover the full cost of the care for a minimum of two years. She didn’t have. She has about enough for about a year and a half. The fees are very expensive, £13500 a week. We were told we could act as guarantors for the other six months fees but we are unable to do this. The upshot was we needed to move her. We saw a couple of homes that frankly I wouldn’t put a dog in. My mother was not a wonderful mother, I think she has some aspects of narcissism to be honest, and I’ve written about our difficult relationship before on other threads about difficult mothers, but nonetheless I try to be a good daughter and I was not about to put her in a home that wasn’t nice. We found another home, a lovely home, but a little cheaper (as they had a special offer on) which means she can actually afford two years there. We arranged the move.
Half an hour before we went to collect mother this afternoon, a social worker, out of the blue, rang me, and was extremely cross with me because we are moving mother (who had agreed to the move herself.) Social Services have taken zilch interest in mother before this. She told she could have been able to negotiate a better rate for mum if we had wanted her to. A bit late now, I thought! She was quite aggressive with me, she clearly disapproved of us moving mum, even though I told her we can’t afford the current home. When we arrived at the home to collect mum, I spoke to the manager and told her about the social worker. The manager said she probably could have got the upper management to agree to mum having just enough money for just a year there and she had spoken to mother about this, but unfortunately mum didn’t tell us. So it seems mum could actually have stayed there and Social Services would have picked up the cost when mum’s money ran out. Anyway we went ahead with the move, and now mum’s really unhappy and says she wants to go back to the first home. I’ve been so stressed with all this, just wanted to unload really.
Tales about "stingy" guests and hosts.