Grandparent going into home (keeping savings)

Ames

margaretclare wrote: »

I couldn't agree more.

You can only live in one place at a time. Wherever you live, you have to pay for it. Heating, lighting, laundry, cleaning etc, and we haven't even got on to personal care and safety.

PS: Clothing has to be washable at 60 degrees? Not a stitch of my clothing would stand up to this rough treatment.

Unless things have changed since my grandma was in a home you wouldn't need to worry about that. Clothes were dished out to anyone, not kept separate for the resident they belonged to.

Which is one reason why it should be seen as a good thing when elderly relatives have savings and can choose where to go, instead of being shoved into the cheapest LA funded home.

Spendless

Ames wrote: »

Unless things have changed since my grandma was in a home you wouldn't need to worry about that. Clothes were dished out to anyone, not kept separate for the resident they belonged to.

Which is one reason why it should be seen as a good thing when elderly relatives have savings and can choose where to go, instead of being shoved into the cheapest LA funded home.

My Nan who has dementia has been in a home for 3 years this month.

Things do get muddled, yes, but all clothes are asked to be labelled so the correct person can get them back. 90% of Nan's clothes are returned to her after laundering.

No idea about washing them, but she does go through a few cardis/jumpers/tops due to food stains.

Ames

Spendless wrote: »

My Nan who has dementia has been in a home for 3 years this month.

Things do get muddled, yes, but all clothes are asked to be labelled so the correct person can get them back. 90% of Nan's clothes are returned to her after laundering.

No idea about washing them, but she does go through a few cardis/jumpers/tops due to food stains.

It was about 15 years ago so things might have changed. I was talking to someone a few months ago who worked in care homes and said it was common, but I don't know when he'd stopped working in the sector. We found out when we got grandma a cardigan for her birthday and next visit someone else was wearing it. Staff said they didn't keep track of who clothes belonged to.

The clothes issue was by far the least problem we had with the home.

Seanymph

I guess the point that I'd like to see taken into consideration in the political debate currently running as background to this (sorry OP!) is that when 'cradle to grave' care was 'promised' (really? By a Prime Minister?) - there weren't that many care homes, and in home care by family was the norm.

Therefore I suspect that he was focusing rather on HEALTH care rather than SOCIAL care. Which, on the scale we currently have it, is a rather new phenomena.

Even going back to my grandparents - 25 or so years ago - one died in hospital of illness, one at home after six months care. A care HOME was not an option for either, no care home, no issue with funding.

Increasingly women are working, families live long distances apart, and there is no family care available- we are all committed so much more than people were historically (despite all the labour saving gadgets!).

Therefore the demands and expectations provided by care homes has increased considerably since the 'promise' of one prime minister of 'cradle to grave'.

margaretclare

Ames wrote: »

Unless things have changed since my grandma was in a home you wouldn't need to worry about that. Clothes were dished out to anyone, not kept separate for the resident they belonged to.

Which is one reason why it should be seen as a good thing when elderly relatives have savings and can choose where to go, instead of being shoved into the cheapest LA funded home.

I would not want to wear 'communal' clothing. That's degrading in the extreme. You could wear prison-issue tracksuit top and bottoms and that would really express what is thought of elderly residents.

The words of a postwar minister (was it Attlee or Bevan, or even the 1942 Beveridge report?) have been much quoted and re-quoted. For some reason those words seem to be seized on as if they were gospel, when other ministerial speeches have been lost in the mists of time. There was also a plan in those years that women should not work, should concentrate on 'replenishing the race' (Beveridge) and should rely for financial support and pension provision on their husbands. A decade before that, the nation had been promised 'peace in our time'. We all know where that promise went to!

My point is: all that has changed. The world we live in now is very different to that of 1945. So why should that one 'cradle to grave' quote still be hung on to as if it was the voice of God?

Brighton_belle

margaretclare wrote: »

My point is: all that has changed. The world we live in now is very different to that of 1945. So why should that one 'cradle to grave' quote still be hung on to as if it was the voice of God?

Yes, I agree. I actually don't know any elderly person who quotes that expression or lives in expectation of it. I never ever heard my parents mention it.

maman

Gavin83 wrote: »

As I said before we live in a country where those able to pay and those that can't don't .

That's a very simplistic view. It's akin to saying that everyone pays their fair share of tax or all employers pay their staff a fair wage or everyone who has benefits is a deserving case.

Mojisola

Spendless wrote: »

My Nan who has dementia has been in a home for 3 years this month.

Things do get muddled, yes, but all clothes are asked to be labelled so the correct person can get them back. 90% of Nan's clothes are returned to her after laundering.

When Dad went into residential care, we had to put name labels on all his clothes - he only once ended up with someone else's clothes, a shirt without a name label so the staff had tried to guess who was the most likely owner.

When he died, we donated all his clothes to the home because they sometimes had, through Social Services, emergency admissions who arrived with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.

merrydance

Also if you get sectioned and are in hospital for more than 28 days, the council has to pay your care home fees, no matter how much money you have. When people have dementia or alzheimers it is not that uncommon for them to become agressive and need sectioning. My friend's father has just been placed into a care home. The council pay so much ( as they found a place but the family did not like it, where the full fees would have been paid) and my friend's family top it up. They are still saving themselves a considerable amount of money and they are really wealthy.

elsien

merrydance wrote: »

Also if you get sectioned and are in hospital for more than 28 days, the council has to pay your care home fees, no matter how much money you have. When people have dementia or alzheimers it is not that uncommon for them to become agressive and need sectioning. My friend's father has just been placed into a care home. The council pay so much ( as they found a place but the family did not like it, where the full fees would have been paid) and my friend's family top it up. They are still saving themselves a considerable amount of money and they are really wealthy.

That's not entirely correct. 117 aftercare applies where the housing is specifically required in order to support the mental health needs.