Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)

Subject: BS: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed.
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 11 Mar 11 - 10:23 AM

Wirral Borough Council, which is situated on the east bank of the river Mersey, is planning to close all five of its respite care homes by March 31st, without providing proper alternative care. This decision has been taken in accordance with central government demands for spending cuts.

Even so, it is so short sighted and callous that, even with a tory majority on the council, I can hardly believe it has been taken.

A user of one of the homes is serving a judicial review on the council to keep all 5 open.

As a result, the Council has been served with an injunction preventing them from closing any of the homes until the matter is sorted. The initial hearing is to be held in Manchester on Thursday March 17th, and Wirral TUC will be hiring a coach to take protesters over there.

WE NEED ALL THE HELP WE CAN GET!!!

I'll post more details as I get them.

If you can come and support us, and let other people know, then we will be extremely grateful.

Bear in mind that this will probably end up as a test case. In other words, if we are successful, then Wirral will be quoted as a precedent for similar closures around the country.

For anyone who's not up to speed with such matters, respite care is what it says on the tin. The homes exist so that anyone who's caring for a sick or elderly person can get a short break from what is literally a 24 hour nightmare, knowing that their loved ones have been left in capable hands. They are also rehabilitation centres in cases where someone being cared for is taken sick and cannot be looked after at home. In other words they take a little bit of the strain off the NHS.

This is one fight we have absolutely got to win. I know because I spent several years looking after my mother when she was crippled, sick, senile and doubly incontinent. Almost ten years after she went into a home full time, I am still suffering the effects of stress, depression, insomnia, and various other forms of psychological trauma. Without the alleviating benefit of respite care, God alone knows what sort of a state I would be in now. Let's make sure nobody ever has to find out.

Fraternal Cheers,

Fred.

Subject: RE: BS: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed.
From: Morticia
Date: 11 Mar 11 - 12:59 PM

without providing proper alternative care

What is being suggested then? I don't believe nothing is.

Subject: RE: BS: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed.
From: pdq
Date: 11 Mar 11 - 01:34 PM

You are being jerked around by your politicians again. Just like the US people.

When it come time for the bloated government to live within its means, the professional politicians threaten to make cuts in the programs that will make the public as angry as possible.

The US federal government wastes about 40% of every dollar on fraud, inefficiency and corruption. Rather than correct problems, they threaten to close mental hospitals, slow down road repair, close parks and slash national defence.

Many politicians are self-serving assholes.

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 12 Mar 11 - 11:01 AM

Morticia. The council has said that they will look for private service providers, although they appear to have made no effort to do so up till now. Even if they find anyone, and we're less than 3 weeks from the closure date, PSPs are profit driven, and they typically keep their staff on long hours at the minimum wage. A cheesed off underpaid workforce is far from the ideal in terms of ensuring high quality respite.

The other alternative they have proposed, and please don't nobody fall about laughing, is to fund bed and breakfast accommodation. People go into respite because they need specialist care. Huge numbers are crippled and wheelchair bound. Many are incontinent and many more are senile. Without a proper safety lock on the front door, many would go wandering off at considerable risk to themselves and passing motorists. And they usually have special dietary needs.

Can you see your average bed and breakfast manager being able to cope with that lot? I certainly can't.

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: Richie Black (misused acct, bad email)
Date: 12 Mar 11 - 11:13 AM

The government have made sensible decisions on where and by how much to cut public spending. We all have to accept this.

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 12 Mar 11 - 12:01 PM

No kidding? Does that include the bankers?

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: Richie Black (misused acct, bad email)
Date: 12 Mar 11 - 01:49 PM

There are a number of nursing homes in the Warreal area, none of them seem to be closing down. Have you given any of them consideration ?


Here is a link
http://www.carehome.co.uk/care_search_results.cfm/searchtown/Wirral/searchchtype/private

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: Noreen
Date: 12 Mar 11 - 05:07 PM

Richie, do you know anything about respite care, how it works and those who need it?

Your first post to this thread doesn't inspire confidence in your impartiality in this subject.

Sounds like a dire situation, Fred.

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 07:23 AM

Sorry Richie. It's spelt Wirral and it's obvious you don't even know the difference between respite care homes and residential homes for the elderly.

Tell you what, when you've dealt with a mother whose personality changed almost overnight, from being a warm and generous human being to becoming mean, argumentative and paranoid, you might have room to talk. When she's followed you round all day complaining that she's lost something she's actually got in her hand; when she cuts her dresses to shreds in the belief that she's altering them; when she wakes you up at three o'clock in the morning to tell you she's off to bed; when you can't get her over the door to go to day care because she's convinced she's got no kleenex in her handbag, after you've shown her the handbag is bursting with kleenex; when you've routinely washed her shit off the bathroom carpet; and when you've lived with the nightmare 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, month in and month out, then you might have room to talk.

Noreen. You are dead right. It is a dire situation, and one for which the ruling group on Wirral council have absolutely no comprehension, or compassion. The situation I've described didn't just apply to me. There are thousands of carers all over the country who are in the same boat. That is why it is essential that we get the closures stopped.

Oh and by the way, the nightmare didn't end when my mother went into a nursing home full time. I was lucky enough to get her into the best home on the Wirral. Shortly afterwards it was sold and the guests, including my mother, who was by this time too sick to be moved, suffered a dramatic decline in the standard of care. In the end things got so bad that CSCI had to place an embargo on any further admissions and almost ordered the place to close down.

Sorry Richie. Profit, privatisation and spending cuts are totally incompatible with the needs of the elderly and the vulnerable.

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: Richie Black (misused acct, bad email)
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 07:47 AM

I am sympathetic to your plight. Please understand it was not the current Government that created this situation, but rather the Labour government and local committees spending money that we just don't have. I have never experienced what it is like have a loved living in a Social Services run home.

However, there is a difference between sympathising and feeling guilt. While I sympathise with you, My father spent his last years in a private nursing home, like so many, he made his own provisions for old age.

I can't understand why some people feel that government are duty bound to look after us in old age. As my father used to say, "I owe them nothing, just as they owe me nothing."

So, yes I sympathise, but I am not prepared to go further than that.

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 08:01 AM

Richie. That is absolute ballocks. First of all, the reason we are in this mess is not because the previous government went on a massive spending spree, but because they had to borrow billions to bail out a group of people who brought us to the brink of a 1930s style depression, and even now have not learned their lesson.

Regarding the rest of your posting. In 1945, the government instituted the welfare state. My parents paid for it, just as I paid for it, and the current users of respite home care paid for that respite care through rates and taxes. Suddenly, when the very people who spent their lives paying for this provision need it, it is whisked away to bail out a bunch of fat cat bankers who are still paying themselves collossal salaries and bonuses.

Where is the justice in that?

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 08:25 AM

"it was not the current Government that created this situation,"
Very true; the present crisis has been caused by the corporate greed of boardroom Tories, who have traditionally supported and bankrolled Conservatism - it was they, their values and their helping themselves to the nation's wealth who have driven not only Britain, but most of the world to the point of bankrupcy.
'New' Labour, who have taken on board all the values of Conservatism - with a vengeance - stood by and let it happen.
Care homes - they haven't got started yet (hope your hospital insurance is up-to-date)!
Mind you, the bankers (is that the word?) who helped bleed the country dry might just have a crisis of concience and return their massive bonuses to help bail the country out - what do you think?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: Morticia
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 08:41 AM

Many counties have tendered their respite services out to private providers, I live in one of them.It isn't an amazing quality of care but neither was LA owned care provision. The issue is what we pay people to do an incredibly hard job and how little we value them in this society.

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 09:03 AM

"The other alternative they have proposed, and please don't nobody fall about laughing, is to fund bed and breakfast accommodation."

How many guest houses and B&B's have management systems in places that meet Care Quality Standards requirements? The hoops are difficult enough for specialist organisations to jump through.

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 09:13 AM

Sorry - doing this in two posts - lost my cursor.

Also Ritchie - a chance for you to learn something:

Respite care provision covers a wide spectrum:

People with dementia (including early onset dementia), and other organic mental health problems, people BORN with learning disability, and long term limiting disabilities - e.g. cerebral palsy, people with Autistic Spectrum disorders, people who develop limiting illness at any stage of life, e.g. strokes, people sho become disbled due to accidents and trauma.

So ... if someone is born with a condition that requires 24/7 care, do you think that person should have saved enough before being born, or or you advocating atrocities carried out against the disabled by the far right in 1940s Germany?

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 09:17 AM

In reference to the original post:

What is the Area Based Grant (which used to include carers grant) allocation for Wirral Borough?

How is Wirral Borough allocating ABG now that it is no longer ringfenced?

Will adequate Home Based Respite be offered as an alternative?

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 09:39 AM

SPB. I can't answer the first one. I haven't got the figures with me.

WBC is planning to allocate direct payments to service users, who will then buy their own respite. This sounds crazy to me, partly because there are no private facilities. Also, while I have no knowledge of how the council intend to implement this, it sounds as though it will be wide open to abuse, without an the usual bureaucracy to check the validity of claims.

So the answer to your third question is not at present, and very doubtful that it ever will be. Overall, I do not believe that private respite care homes, even if they existed in sufficient numbers, would not offer anything like the standard of care which LA homes expected to provide.

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: Morticia
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 01:56 PM

I can't agree with that Fred and I think you may be worrying unnecessarily. I worked as a student and then went in and out as a social worker to both, private was better.

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: open mike
Date: 13 Mar 11 - 10:32 PM

here most B&B's only offer sleeping accommodations, and a morning meal.
Most are closed during the day and the "tenants" are expected to vacate the house until evening..that would not offer much help.

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 06:34 AM

Sorry Morticia. I can't agree. Before putting my mother into a nursing home, I checked every single one in Wallasey. I wouldn't have put my dog in most of them.

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 08:51 AM

My parents have each other still thank goodness, both in their 80s my father is older and coming up for 90 and I am sure that is what keeps them going on but I know there is going to come a time that possibly one of them will need care. The thought of either one of them ending their days in a place 'not fit for a dog' frightens me hearing the stories that you do. How are you going to know for sure, because it appears alright doesn't mean that everything in the home is going to be ok. Despite their physical ailments that go with age they are both quite alert and still have very strong points of view about things. But if either remaining parent was to be left in a vulnerable position I would hate them to lose that spirit.

Subject: RE: Respite Care Home Closures. Help Needed. (UK)
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 09:46 AM

I've just heard that Wirral Borough Council have put a 6-12 month stay of execution on Fernleigh. This was the home over which the council had been served a notice of judicial review.

The hearing, originally scheduled for Thursday, has now been cancelled. This still leaves the other four homes scheduled for closure, for which a seperate judicial review will now be served.