Rising Thresholds: Due to tight funding and high demand, council social workers often only deal with individuals facing the most severe or complex mental health crises, meaning early intervention is harder to access.
So my son is a complex mental health case, and that is why he is getting help, for now, but he has someone who doesn’t have the full training or experience. Going back into the 1970s, I was training to be a social worker myself and thought I didn’t finish the course I know something about it, but things have changed a lot in 50 years, due to financial constraints.
Yes, I am sure you are right about councils taking over someone else’s money - again they will just do the cheapest and easiest things, not necessarily personalised and not always in the best interests of that person, though on paper it will look legally correct. He would get a succession of people visiting him which he would hate. Unfortunately there is only me willing to take it on at present, and if I become very unwell, and ultimately die I may not have any choice. I have 2 other adult sons and one of them won’t speak to my son with needs (and he lives a long way off), and the other one, would I suspect be very reluctant to help either, but when that happens depending on the circumstances, he is the one most likely to agree if pushed, and he is also just about to move about 8 miles from him. For all kinds of reasons I cannot unpack here though, the relationship between all of my sons is one that neither of the other 2 sons would want to take on the support that I am giving still.
I have rung mental health charities before. Rethink actually have a good phone in service for advice. My experience of Mind was not so good, but it depends on who is on the phone. I think their advice sheets are excellent, but the reality of helping someone is not so simple unfortunately. People are not robots and if you are trying to help someone who does not want to be helped or have people invade their flat, as I am facing, then it is likely a slow gentle process not one of ticking boxes.
My son lives in a Housing Association flat. He has been living independently there for 17 years but until January, he had a person via Direct Payments who did his washing, shopping, cooking and cleaning. Since his relapse and coming out of hospital 2 weeks or so ago, there is no one. The council are fully aware of this, and this is why the case worker, who is not a social worker is doing an assessment of his social care needs.
She began this process in hospital, and in theory I was supposed to be at that meeting, but what with the heatwave, having sciatica, and I was due to see a physio that day for the sciatica, plus the hospitals wretched issues with technology, I couldn’t even get onto the online link to it. I was very upset by this, but next Tuesday I hope if all goes OK, to be in person at the meeting which will be a continuation of the assessment, but in my son’s flat. I have given her plenty of pre meeting info so she has a reasonable picture of how my son is coping (or not coping as is the reality).
Yes, at present I do live in a retirement flat owned by a large company (Churchill not the more expensive McCarthy Stone ones). My Churchill flat was modestly priced as it is not brand new but nearly 15 yrs old, the newer ones are an eye watering price,as are the McCarthy Stone ones. There are new Churchill flats in the town where my mentally ill son lives, but I do not want to live in that town. I lived there for 20 years and want to go to a quieter more rural village where my youngest son is about to move to in a week’s time. I need support too, and he will help me as I age. However though there is one block of retirement flats in the village, they are much older than mine and are owned by a different company. I did have an offer in on one, that was to be cheaper than mine, but unfortunately the service charges are the biggest issue, and they are a little dearer overall, though not drastically so. I had hoped to at least pay less re the flat purchase, but am unable to sell my own flat, as the whole house and flat sales have ground to a halt and I haven’t had a single viewing. This is universal, but retirement flats are niche, so it’s tricky as buyers have more choice locally and prices are dropping. Mine is priced OK I believe for the brand, but I suspect that many will go for much cheaper ones locally at the moment, and I need to be cautious about dropping the price too much.
I am sorry to hear of your own situation, and thank goodness there was one person in that hospital who did help - of course the hospitals need to move people on, so they employ people like that who know the system. I find it interesting that the hospitals that deal with physical health cannot just shove elderly/vulnerable people out to their homes without a a structure of support as you were given, but when I tried to oppose my son’s discharge in a mental hospital on health and safety grounds of his flat, all hell let loose (in the discharge meeting). All I was asking for was a risk assessment based in part on the temperature in the flat, and that no one would take on that responsibility. I am still dealing with that, but the hospital did shove him out, and he has been living in temps of 33 degrees at worst and nobody cares. Their Discharge person and the psychiatrist repeatedly said it wasn’t their responsibility, but it was the Housing Association, and this was only partially true. I even opposed it based on my legal position as ‘nearest relative’ but they overrode me.
Privately in an email the case worker from the county told me that I should take out a Safeguarding Alert which I did, and she told me that if anything happened to him then it would be the responsibility of the hospital. I am still trying to deal with this whole issue of heat control with the Housing Association, but I can only deal with so much right now, and I just have to let things go from day to day, but I will not back down on it. Actually it’s a universal issue that the Housing Associations have now got to grasp, apparently since Awab’s law was put in place last year, but I am just fighting for my son, I can’t fight for the whole country! ie there are things that can and must be put in place in some properties to reduce sun coming in, such as solar film and the HAs are responsible if the person is vulnerable.
So my son was shoved out back into his boiling flat without that support put in place, and the caseworker was honest with me in telling me that it would take time to set things up, hence me finding myself in this situation right now. Yes, it is in hand, but at present my son is doing some things, but when I visited him last week he was doing a lot of staring into space. I did one visit where I defrosted his freezer, and helped him with 2 phone calls, and did some shopping. In theory he can make it into the big supermarket next door to him, but it’s a challenge for him to do. Apparently he did make it into the pharmacy to get his meds, but all of it is a challenge, and if he doesn’t let the care coordinator in then that adds to his issues. She was due to go in yesterday, and she said she would let me know if he didn’t let her in, and as I didn’t hear I am hopeful that she got in!
So the care coordinator is doing her best for him, right now, but it’s not easy. She is going to be at the meeting on tuesday and is visiting for a depot injection. I have agreed to accompany my son to a psychiatrist meeting in about 10 days, as the CC is on leave, but as this is all a 4 hr round trip by public transport on a good day, (and the trains are constantly in chaos on the return journey meaning that it’s often an 11hr round trip as I stay for a few hours to help him with things). Last week I averted 3 crises, one financial, one medical, and one social, by visiting, as if I hadn’t done 3 jobs my son would not have received his meds, would likely have had £200 taken from his account that he couldn’t afford, and his freezer might have ceased to work if I hadn’t defrosted it.
The case worker and the care coordinator are painfully aware of how much I am doing for my son, but the system creaks on relying mostly on families, and some have no one at all, and then they wonder why they end up back in hospital. There are lots of issues tied into all of that, that I won’t go into here, but when my son reached crisis point, I had to get him to actually ring 111 and ask for help. In theory if he had not rung 111 himself, then they might quite likely have said if he is not asking for help himself then we cannot do anything. Even if I had as nearest relative insisted that he had an assessment there was no guarantee that he would then get help if they judged him to have ‘capacity’ and that is such a bugbear for relatives who are not coping, as the whole concept of capacity gets used to avoid giving people with psychosis the help they need. Lucky for me, my son did ring 111, and agreed to the Crisis team going in, as even though 3 weeks on he disengaged, there had been enough contact for them to ask for an assessment of him by then.
Thank you for tagging in other people and giving extensive advice. I am pretty clued up and well educated and can use the internet well. It’s a very hard world out there now for those who are vulnerable and alone.