Hi
I’m just sounding off and working through my thoughts as much as asking for advice.
My parents live 200 miles from the rest of the family - their choice to move when they retired. They refuse to move back. So I am dealing with this situation long distance and like a lot of people I’m juggling it with full time work and husband (thankfully no kids - I don’t know how people cope with the sandwich situation of teenagers and elderly parents 
).
At the end of August my parents and I met with their social worker for her to assess them. She was going to recommend that they both go into permanent residential care together. I have just had a call from her to say that her recommendation was rejected. The panel didn’t feel that we’d followed up every option to keep them at home. So they want the reablement team to come in. But when that team came in before they pulled themselves out as they assessed mum as not needing help because she has private carers from Home Instead. They actually told me that when mum came home from hospital I should have cancelled home instead to just have their team. Whereas The reablement team carers popped in for a brief visit helped mum use the commode and left without emptying it. I refuse to pull the private carers out, because mum and dad trust them and they do far more than the bare minimum social services provide. There is no way they could manage without home instead. So the social worker is going to see if the reablement team will work alongside the private carers so that they can assess mums ability and needs.
I feel so deflated, I just don’t know what to do. The social worker is going to call me back tomorrow after she has spoken to mum and dad to discuss where we go from here.
I knew the process of getting mum and dad into a home wouldn’t be easy but I was on cloud nine last week thinking finally social services were on board but now I feel like I’m back to square one waiting for mum to have the next fall and end up back in hospital.
My parents would be self funding so I could just go ahead and look for a care home place for them myself, which I plan to do. So far there are no vacancies, and I’ve asked for them to go on waiting lists, but we can’t visit to look at possible homes due to covid so I feel like we are doing this blind. And then there is that awful risk if we actually manage to find a place for them: what happens when their money runs out in a couple of years time?
And do I spend on a profiling bed in the meantime knowing that they mum may only get a few months use of it if we get her into a home? Is it worth spending more on keeping them in their home?
They have a dog that is deaf blind and doubly incontinent so the house smells really bad. To make it acceptable for a live in carer would need us to put in new carpets throughout the downstairs plus clear out decorate and furnish the spare room. The house is full of clutter, and mum is sleeping in the living room downstairs so changing the carpets would be impossible due to the amount of disruption. She won’t let us get rid of anything so the clutter is just being moved from room to room as we need to access or find things. The spare room is piled up full, so is her bedroom as we had to move stuff out of the living room to fit the bed in, and dad can just about get to his bed in his room but is currently sleeping on the settee downstairs so he can help mum through the night. So live in care is a non starter without somehow clearing the spare room and making good.
I don’t know what to do for the best.
Sorry for the length of this. I’m so confused about social services and what they do, and how to move forward and I’m just so tired from it all.
Any thoughts or advice?