Care

This is a huge topic. What care can you get help with in your own home? What if you need to go into a residential care home? What care is available, what does it cost.

Rather than try and better the information and advice already available from Age UK here is a link to their website. www.ageuk.org.uk/home-and-care/help-at-home/finding-help-at-home

Everything you need to know is clearly explained on their website. So where do we fit in? Why use us?

Dealing with Social Services is not straightforward. For reasons I have never understood most Social Services Departments go out of their way to find ways to refuse clients the help they are entitled to.

Elderly clients may find themselves in hospital following an accident or an illness. It may be obvious to the client and to their family that they are still too unwell to be sent back to their own home and that ideally they need a period of time in temporary care where they can get some help with improving their mobility or for general rehabilitation. But Social Services will insist on sending them home.

They will promise care visits. But in reality the care you may get will be limited to one or two or three 15 minute visits a day from someone employed by an outside agency on minimum wage with rarely the same person attending for more than a few sessions before being replaced by another stranger.

They will claim the patient can walk and look after themselves even when it is patently untrue.

Money. If clients are very ill or incapacitated the NHS has to pick up the whole of their care bill. It's called Continuing Care. In my entire professional career I have never come across a case where the Social Services Department have voluntarily agreed a client fits the criteria for Continuing Care. They always find the client doesn't qualify regardless of how bad their heath is. You have to fight for what you are entitled to. We can help you do that.

If you or your father or mother finds themselves in such a situation talk to us. We know how the system should work and we know how to make sure Social Services do their duty to the client properly and fairly. It's sad that when you need help the very people who should be providing it so often let you down just to save money. But that's life in modern Britain