Care Homes. The name is a bit of a misnomer, unless it's referring to the chief 'care' of such places, which is making money. Let me tell you a little about Care Homes, of which I have experience on account of my mother being in one for four years on the 25th of this month. She's 103 (104 in May), has Alzheimer's and cancer, and she's been in it since 2022 and in all that time it's been nothing but a continual stream of complaints from me about the way in which she's 'looked after'. I'm more or less satisfied with the way she's fed and watered in their 'one-size-fits-all' standard of care, but when it comes to specific requirements relating to my mother's particular condition, they don't have a scooby - or if they do, they ignore it.
When I visit, the floor is very often filthy as are the two tables in her room, which the night-shift staff seem unwilling or incapable of wiping unless I ask them, obviously preferring to leave such tasks to the cleaners in the morning. My mother has two hearing aids, which often are left with dead or dying batteries in them, leaving her unable to hear. Sometimes they have no batteries at all, and when I ask staff to fit new ones, the response is "I don't know where they're kept" or on a few occasions "I don't know how to fit them" The last time I was told this, I asked the woman how long she'd worked in the place and was told "Four years". Simply staggering.
Also, on the back of the battery pack, it says to wait for 60 seconds after removing the orange stickers before inserting, but the staff don't usually bother waiting, meaning the new batteries aren't 100% effective. They also don't press the reset button on the hearing aids after inserting batteries, which, again, means they remain ineffective. I wouldn't trust most of these people to look after a goldfish, never mind a human being. They're supposed to check my mother's hearing aids every few hours, and though they mark down that they have, they clearly haven't bothered. Only recently, I was told that new batteries had been inserted earlier in the morning, but my mother didn't even know when I was speaking to her. When I checked her two hearing aids, one had a battery and the other didn't. So much for new batteries being fitted that morning.
Due to my mother's Alzheimer's, I had asked for her hearing aids and their receptacles to be stored in the reception office at bedtime, to prevent her putting them in before visiting the toilet through the small hours and then forgetting to remove them when she returned to bed. She also has tinnitus, meaning she often hears noises in her inner ear canal which she thinks are 'exterior' noises, resulting in her fitting her hearing aids in the small hours of the morning to see if she can identify their source. She fits them to go to the en suite toilet, then forgets to take them out when she returns to bed, which has resulted in them getting broken on several occasions as she's wearing them while asleep. Due to her befuddled state, she sometimes puts her dentures in the hearing aid receptacles, which makes a helluva mess.
Because of these issues, I asked for her hearing aids and receptacles not to be kept in her room through the night as she didn't need them at 2 a.m. (or whatever) to go to the toilet, and this was agreed upon by management. Staff, however, had a different idea, and despite assuring me several times that this was being followed, weren't actually doing so, as I found out one night when a member of staff inadvertently let slip that the items were left in her room overnight.
I decided to check, so I dropped in at 1 a.m. one morning to find my mother fully dressed and fast asleep, slumped in her armchair in front of the TV, which along with her room light was still on. 1 a.m. - terrible. When I questioned staff as to why my mother wasn't in bed, one of them produced what looked like an envelope, on the back of which was written a list of names and room numbers. Every name had 'assist' written next to it, with the exception of my mother's, which said 'leave'. This was despite me telling staff and management (from day one) that my mother's bedtime was 10 p.m. However, sometimes my mother retired to her bed early, and some clueless 'senior carer' took it upon herself to decide that if my mother could put herself to bed at 7 or 8 p.m., she was likewise capable of going to bed at 10 without assistance.
Trouble with that was my mother would sit up watching TV until she fell asleep in her chair, and because she wasn't being checked, that could be in the wee small hours. Trusting anyone with Alzheimer's to look after themselves properly by going to bed at a reasonable and regular time is ridiculous - they're in a care home because they can't be relied on to look after themselves, yet the numpties in my mother's place apparently think otherwise. Often when I visited, my mother had been left in bed most or all of the day and when I enquired as to why, I was told "because she wanted a lie in". Well, of course she did, being knackered as she wasn't helped to bed at 10 p.m., which is when I said from day one was my mother's bedtime. But nah, why listen to the person who looked after her by himself for years, eh, and who knows what's best for her based on personal experience?
They just seemed incapable of understanding that her limbs and mind would further atrophy if she was left in bed for hours, and sometimes she would just stare at the ceiling when I visited as her mind had essentially closed down through lack of any kind of physical and mental stimulation. They don't care, however, as all they're really interested in is their cigarette breaks and doing as little as they can get away with. Recently, over the course of at least a week, the floor in my mother's room hadn't been swept and the same particles of dirt and 'debris' were still in place after several visits. I took photos, however, and if I have to take the Care Home to court, I have dozens, if not hundreds of photos showing the dirty and untidy state of her room, including excrement on her toilet seat, which wasn't cleaned properly even after me bringing it to their attention. What's that? It's a dirty job and they don't get paid much? Tough! They shouldn't do it then. Hell, what am I saying? They don't.
I'm not saying that all staff are the same, some are quite pleasant, but far too many just don't appear to have a scooby when it comes to the quality of care in regard to a nearly 104 year old woman with Alzheimer's and cancer. In the interests of fairness, the current manageress (she's had two predecessors) is trying to solve the issues, but her staff simply don't seem to listen to her. They treat the place like their private fiefdom and run it for their own convenience rather than that of the residents. It's as though it's staffed by a bunch of amateurs, not properly-trained professionals. It now has new owners, yet I've still to see any consistent improvement. Around three years ago, my local newspaper ran a story about my unhappiness with the place, but the Care Home didn't respond.
No photos this time as there are simply too many to choose from, but in the next instalment there will be horror stories aplenty and I'll publish names and photographs of some of the culprits. Unless, that is, after four years of this fiasco, they can get their act together and treat my mother with the dignity she deserves. Up to them. Non-anonymous comments welcome.
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