I know a lot of people will say they couldn’t bring themselves to watch this programme but as a carer for my mum who has Parkinson’s dementia I did.
I’m not embarrassed to say I cried for most of the programme not just because it was really upsetting to watch but almost like a release valve inside me went off seeing a window into “MY” life. It was a perfect mirror of the ups and downs of the daily struggle to deal with my mum and her unpredictable dementia. The little things you do to comfort the person you care for and the sacrifices you make in your own personal life. We too are just in the long drawn out battle with the NHS for continuing Medical Healthcare to try and keep my mum at home as long as we can so this drama really touched me and I’m pleased I watched it as it has given me a detemination boost I so really needed.
Because for me at times it’s not the actual caring that is bloody hard work but the politics…
Yes, it was a good drama, and well the writing, the acting and hopefully, raising the issue in the public consciousness in a similar way to the Cathy Come Home drama in the sixties, highlighting homelessness.
It was ‘flawed’ in many ways (to my mind the ‘happy ending’ where they got CHC funding!) (It would have been MUCH more true to life and ‘grittier’ to show them being turned down again, and the mum going back to the original council funded care home - where the manager made such an eloquent and heartbreaking plea for WHY it was so poor.)
Alison Steadman brilliantly captured what I called that ‘aggressive vacancy’ in her face and slumped features.
PS - there’s some more discussion of this programme in All About Caring above.
Totally agree; it’s the politics. Those in authority need to be trained in having a conscience to support us all, carers included. As not only is the NHS at breaking point - we all are. It wouldn’t hurt them to show compassion, kindness, understanding + humanity to all struggling…what else do they spend all their wages on if they can’t afford to be decent human beings…? Grrrh!
I think it can be that hospital staff appear ‘hard’ because they have to ‘distance’ themselves from patients they don’t have funds to help. It can be very distressing to have to continually turn people away from the help they NEED. I think that’s why staff get a ‘thick skin’ - it’s a defence mechanism for themselves.
They themselves have NO say so in whether there are adequate funds or not - they are just dumped with telling patients that no one is going to do what NEEDS to be done.
Those who withhold the funds (government, health trust chief executives etc etc) never have to see the damage their funding decisions make. THEY don’t have to tell relatives that nothing can be done, to just go away and shut up.
They get others - the nurses and so on - to do their dirty work for them.