What assistance can my Mum get?

[4mymum]

My fiercely independent 85-year-old Mum has deteriorating eyesight due to Wet Age-Related Macular Degeneration. Until recently she was a very active walker, knitter/crafter, involved in church etc. She's had regular injections in both eyes for > 18 months now but her vision continues to deteriorate. We've done the obvious things to help her do the things she loves such as increasing the font size on her kindle & i-pad (she loves to read & play sudoku), brightness on TV etc. She has small aids eg. magnifying glass (and one on her i-pad), downloaded Insight podcasts etc. but I really need to find more ways to help her with everyday tasks. She has a cleaner come once a month, and during lockdown, I'm trying to do as much shopping for her as I can (although she insists on going out for her walks every day!). What other things should we be thinking about doing in order to help her with the basics? Is there any other assistance we could be getting for her?

[Hidden]

Hi, we've got some Helpful Stuff Topics on here that might help. There's a list of mostly country specific sources of information and aid (UK, US, other ) along with one about tech info and a range of other things.

The idea with the Topics is that they're not conversational threads like these posts but just repositories of "useful stuff"

Landscape works best to find them if you have a tablet.

Click the 9 circles on the header, select Macular society, scroll over to Right hand side, scroll down to Pinned posts, click " see all", scroll down to Topics.

It's a bit clunky I'm afraid and you might have to click a few but its the only way to find info relatively easily as the HU site search is useless. The Mac Soc admins set up the topic headers for us, anyone can link their post to a topic or add to an existing one but as I say, the " Helpful Stuff" ones are just intended to answer common questions.

Hope there's something there you can use

[4mymum in reply to Hidden]

Thank you so much I will take a look

[MikeG1944]

Hi 4mymum; you don't say whether you are in the UK or USA, etc. But in the UK there's a little known allowance paid by the government called Attendance Allowance (not sure why they called it that as it's nothing to do with having a carer, etc.) Easy to get and the extra money around £80 a week (in 2 levels) and is paid every 4 weeks like your pension.

I'm sure she would be able to get it from what you say and it's not means tested.

1st step is to contact AGE UK at your local branch and they will send a member to do a survey of her needs; this is followed up by a visit from someone from the Pensions Office who will do another one and then recommend you. A few weeks later you'll get money into your account backdated from the time you contacted Age UK.

Details here...

ageuk.org.uk/globalassets/a...

It's not well publicised but it is available, and can be used for what you like. May help with equipment to make your day go better or home help which is not easy to get on the system these days.

Hope that helps.

Mike.

[4mymum in reply to MikeG1944]

Thank you Mike yes we're UK so that's really helpful information - we will get on that first thing in the morning.

[MikeG1944 in reply to 4mymum]

Good luck; you should be able to get it and the extra money makes a lot of difference.