Thinking about your caring role, how good h... - Care Community
Thinking about your caring role, how good has the support you've received from local authorities been? (Share your experiences below)
HelenHU51 VotersPlease select one:
What support! It is a joke.
I have had Carers from Allied come in to help me take care of my mum right until the day sadly she passed away. They wers very good.
No support but then I’ve not asked for any up to now. Not sure I’d get very far though.
What is support?
No support and regardless of your age and own health problems, if you have savings your not entitled to any help at all and they don't want to know. 😣😣
I have been a carer to my husband for many years. Had 2 ops for cancer since November, than in January a open hernia repair. And on the way home a stroke. So I had to put my husband into care. No help from any council, I am having carers in from the NHS for a maximum of 6 weeks, before I have to self fund it. That is about the level of support you get. Sorry to sound off I am tired and not feeling to great.
You’ve been through such a lot so no wonder your tired. It’s terrible to think that there had been no ongoing help offered. What will you do after 6 weeks? Dreadful! Xxxxx
Hopefully get mobile again, left leg and eye sight effected. Need more treatment for my cancer. In the meantime I am paying for my husband being in a care home. Was paying £1300 per week. Now £ 1165 per week. If I need longer carers I will have to pay for it. Don’t know where it will end. Got Aged Uk coming Wednesday afternoon to help me sort a few things. At least I am having physiotherapist coming out daily which is free. Things are not easy or straightforward. Xx
No help offered over very many years of caring and I have serious health issues myself. In the end we paid for private carers for a few weeks to give me the help that I was desperate for.
I had massive support from local authority right up to the my dear wife passed away. If equipment was needed it usually arrived within a couple of days. Cant fault any of them.
Have had wonderful support from nurses helping me to keep mom as well as possible. Equipment provided when needed, and changed as her condition deteriorated. I have direct payments from local authority which together with contribution from mom pays for a PA to help me 17 hours per week. Day Centre provided twice weekly respite for mom up until two years ago when they could no longer handle her toileting needs. No complaints.
In theory plenty of help - if you can wait for it. In practice I got good help on equipment, bed, hoist etc. Actual care - nothing. I wasted a whole afternoon with a lovely woman from the county council discussing wheher I was entitiled to any respite care. I was - lots but first I would have to pay for it, which she could have told me in the first place, second I would have to accept their choice of location and three it was likely to cost more than if I paid for it myself.
Total cost to HCC half a days work from someone who should have been told to make the finances clear at the start and could then have gone to do something useful. Total cost to me of a cuppa which I could afford and a whole afternoon which I definitely could not. The people I was in contact with were very helpful but totally hamstrung by a system which failed to make any imaginative rethink to reduced funding, run by people who had got the idea that a nice chat and the promise of a hospital bed in six weeks was a real help for a 24 hour carer who actually need some days off and a night's unbroken sleep.. One huge problem was the fact that carers have to be gone in time to pick up their children from school leaving a big black hole from three pm every day and not even that between three on Friday and Monday morning
My late dad was born in 1926, mum 1931, according to our local authority their eldest child was born in ,1919!!!!
No support at all. We are now in crisis with me unwell and my husband hospitalised, but "there's no care need "!!!!!
I receive no support at all. I asked for a Carers Assessment and the carers "support" group (as part of the council) told me I didn't need to bother as nobody else asks for one! And we wonder why we're in the state we are in! Unbelievable. I lose the will to fight for carers, I really do.
HelenHU
Hi,
I 've had good service from my local providers, introduced to me whilst I was in hospital, they mostly visited me there initially. I found the palliative care team initially most helpful, they obtained for me a hospital type bed, a raised WC seat, a WC surround frame and a perching chair.
They delivered it and installed all before or as I came out of hospital and also helped me find a carer company and helped with my attendance application, all a great help. Now I have no contact with them unless I ask for it.
IKeith
Excellent support from Acute Care at Home, Home First ,Community Matron when Peter had pneumonia & wanted to be cared for at home. Increased care package, equipment in place within hours. Still monitored by community matron 3 months on following another chest infection.
No support unless you count half an hour a week OT.
Help is just another four letter word! Support?? I'm glad being a carer saves the gov sooo much money...so would reducing the number of leaflets they distribute if support is asked for/identified, all to be found online by even the most basic user! Real support can only happen when they really understand what being a full time carer means; loss of identity, loss of earning potential and pension, loss of friends, loss of time just to be yourself, resentment/guilt, loss of savings, watching people treat your partner/parent/brother/sister/friend with so little respect (which includes not supporting those who have given up so much to become a carer, which is hardly ever an independent choice!)
Questions such as 'how supportive is the local authority '? seem rather innocuous but are invariably loaded, mainly as we are not given a measuring stick! How do we know what they are required to provide when nobody tells us? What does ' good' mean? 'Bad'? Subjective as we have nothing to make a comparison to . So, all in all, a pointless question