Grandmother losing EVERYTHING!

le_loup

Steve_xx wrote: »

Yet these caring and loving people have deemed it normal to have someone else care for their parents and they do not feel that they themselves ought to do it. Would these same individuals palm their own children off to a care home, I kinda think not?

OK. Try yourself at age 60+ looking after a 90 year old with violent dementia and double incontinence.

Steve_xx

le_loup wrote: »

double incontinence.

Rather like you would a newborn baby, or would you pass that job onto someone else?

Bantex_2

The thought of inheritance does not tend to bring out the best in people.
Sometimes think that if people could take it with them that the world would be a better place.

le_loup

Read all my note.

Errata

Steve_xx wrote: »

I think that people here are jumping to way too many conclusions regarding the OP's original query. Typically, people are reading all sorts of situations into something that may not have been presented that well in the first place.


Most people want to protect their assets, no matter who they are.


There's no harm or wrong in the OP asking the question that might produce a better way forward, financially, for both grandma and father.


Many of the more ascerbic remarks in this thread seem to me to come from people who have cited their own experiences where they have invariably banished their parents to care homes. But of course they've been the most expensive ones that the parents own money can afford and therefore that's ok by them. Yet these caring and loving people have deemed it normal to have someone else care for their parents and they do not feel that they themselves ought to do it. Would these same individuals palm their own children off to a care home, I kinda think not?

Children don't weigh 15 stone, need to be turned in bed, need a hoist to get them in and out of bed, in and out of the shower, dressed, wheeled around, fed, medicated, toileted, supervised 24/7, wander out of the house in the middle of the night stark naked........need I go on?

Steve_xx

Errata wrote: »

Children don't weigh 15 stone, need to be turned in bed, need a hoist to get them in and out of bed, in and out of the shower, dressed, wheeled around, fed, medicated, toileted, supervised 24/7, wander out of the house in the middle of the night stark naked........need I go on?

So are the staff at care homes some kind of super people who can do all of these things for your parents, yet you can't? Or it is more that you don't want your own life disrupting too much so you are prepared to palm them off?

Mojisola

Steve_xx wrote: »

I think that people here are jumping to way too many conclusions regarding the OP's original query. Typically, people are reading all sorts of situations into something that may not have been presented that well in the first place.

Many of the more ascerbic remarks in this thread seem to me to come from people who have cited their own experiences where they have invariably banished their parents to care homes. But of course they've been the most expensive ones that the parents own money can afford and therefore that's ok by them. Yet these caring and loving people have deemed it normal to have someone else care for their parents and they do not feel that they themselves ought to do it. Would these same individuals palm their own children off to a care home, I kinda think not?

A fair bit of jumping to conclusions on your part as well.

I don't know the others' stories but I was my parents' main carer for many years. After Mum died, Dad got increasingly frail and needed someone around all the time. I only 'visited' my home for a short time each day because I was sleeping at his house and spending most of the day with him.

After a medical emergency which kept him in hospital for several months, the hospital refused to discharge him unless he was going into residential care because he needed 24/7 care and for at least two carers to be on hand.

Both my parents were very hard-working people but they were in low paid jobs so hadn't been able to save much. They were lucky to benefit from the increase in house prices so there was capital available from the house sale to fund Dad's care.

He didn't go into an expensive home. There wasn't enough money to be sure of funding years at £1000 a week and when the family looked round a few of them, we knew he wouldn't have been comfortable in them anyway. We found a not-for-profit home that was a bit tatty round the edges but with a lovely family atmosphere and good carers. Dad felt at home straight away and his last years were very happy ones.

He'd always been a very sociable man and, looking at him in the home with people around all the time and the banter going on, I realised that the residential home was a much better place for him than his own home had been. He was much happier there than he had been at home in the months leading up to the hospital stay.

People always assume that a person's home is the best place to be and, for some, it is. For others, it certainly isn't.

margaretclare

Steve_xx wrote: »

Rather like you would a newborn baby, or would you pass that job onto someone else?

I think it's a bit different!

For a start, most people who have babies are young and fairly fit. A baby doesn't weigh what an adult does, so picking up baby from cot, changing nappies, feeding etc comes a lot easier. In one's youth it's also much easier to cope with sleepless nights/broken nights' sleep and the thought that this is not going to last for ever. Before too long, baby becomes nursery age then school age and before you know it, you have a stroppy teenager on your hands. But however stroppy, teenager will not need nappies changing or having to be fed.

An older adult has had a lifetime of making own choices, doing as he/she liked, therefore is not going to tolerate being told when to eat/sleep, where to sit etc, as a baby does. An older adult can be difficult, argumentative and physically impossible to cope with. People who think this is possible have never had to do it.

I didn't much like the comment someone made about 'hire a Filipina'. To me this is only one step away from someone being trafficked for slavery. I also don't see why someone from another country, no matter how 'lovely and caring', should be handed the responsibility which others can't/are not prepared to do.

Someone suggested that the OP and Dad should move into Gran's house with her and take over her care. This can be impossible because younger generations have their own careers and need to earn own living.

It is a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year job. Impossible if you expect to eat, sleep and live a normal life. I've looked after babies in their own home and rarely sat down to a meal uninterrupted. How to do that in relation to an older person who may constantly ask the same question 'what time is it, what time is it?'

Errata

Steve_xx wrote: »

So are the staff at care homes some kind of super people who can do all of these things for your parents, yet you can't? Or it is more that you don't want your own life disrupting too much so you are prepared to palm them off?

Me personally? I think the only sensible reply to that question is for me to tell you to wind your neck in.

Mojisola

Steve_xx wrote: »

So are the staff at care homes some kind of super people who can do all of these things for your parents, yet you can't? Or it is more that you don't want your own life disrupting too much so you are prepared to palm them off?

You're either deliberately stirring things or are being totally unimaginative - the staff at care home aren't on duty alone 24/7 unlike many family carers.