HI there
I am new to the forum although I have been following Carers UK on Twitter for some time. My professional role is to ensure carers are supported at a trategic level but I also have a caring role and I often find that my professional and personal experience of caring overlaps.
My dad has Alzheimers and is cared 24/7 by my mum who is in her 80s and has multiple health problems of her own. Prior to lock down they had x3 visits per week from a care agency mainly as a meds prompt but to introduce care into both their lives as my sister and I are both aware of the impact of continuing caring over the last 8 years or so has had on my mum. They are a very private couple and reluctant to accept support so everything has been done in baby steps and it is only in the last few months that we have been able to activiate the financial power of attorney and managed one respite break (admittidly not very successfully) .
Usually I would visit every second or third week to offer support and take them out to lunch and for shopping. My last visit was on 1st March and I am finding it so difficult (like many) currently caring from a distance. Unable to assess the situation as all my support is currently via the phone and although mum is unbeat when I call (every second night) I do have concerns around how they are really coping behind closed doors. Jennifer
Jennifer, I’m interested to see that your role is to support carers at a strategic level. Is that to support carers to work, or in an NHS or Social Services role?
I’m sure that your situation with regards to your parents will bring home again how difficult it is to balance everyone’s needs!
Parents like to pretend that they can still do everything they used to do, and so if the children do various things, it can mask the reality of the situation.
Are both your parents now receiving Attendance Allowance? One of mine was entitled to it but stubbornly denied he was “disabled” even as he struggled to put one foot in front of the other to walk from his front door to our car in the driveway! At 85 he still wouldn’t buy draught excluder for his front door, because the house was rented and "the landlord will benefit after I die!!!) and was still “saving for a rainy day”.
Parents like to forget that their children are not only adults, but nearing pension age themselves. It’s tough. Sadly, the only way some of them will change is when there is a disaster of some kind.