My father was discharged from hospital with a plastic bag containing 13 boxes of pills and a vague promise that a nurse would turn up at his house to help him. ‘He’ll have a package of care put in place,’ yawned a hospital functionary, who didn’t sound at all interested.
But after he got home, the only package was the big bag of pills that sat on the kitchen table and a sheet with thousands of words in very small print detailing the complicated doses, which my father, who can’t see properly, was attempting to read with a magnifying glass when I arrived from Ireland. I had no more luck than him, even with my reading glasses on.
I rang one of the many numbers I had accumulated when he was in hospital, and heaven knows who got back to me because all these people sound the same. They speak in state-ese and talk mostly about themselves. This one gave me a long explanation of the care system, which was so geared towards providing things when it was too late that it made me feel like self-harming. In fact I did self-harm, because I went out to the car to get a vape to suck on in desperation and fell over a plant pot, flat on my face.
In the end, my mother’s private carer reported the predicament we were in back to her bosses and the care company devised a plan whereby she could help with my father’s meds by making it into a joint contract.
After a couple of days of that arrangement, there was a ring at the door and a large, stern-faced woman came in, sat down and started interviewing my father, who was slumped in a chair.
He didn’t know the answers to the questions she was asking so I started answering for him. She let me go on for some time about how cross I was that he had been discharged with no support, and then she told me she was there for my mother. What?
It turns out the system is so slow that it was only just catching up with the cancelling of a previous social services carer who was doing my mother’s daily visit for her dementia until my father had a stroke, whereupon I had to retain a much more expensive private carer as the only way to get a live-in to stay with my mother full time when my father was in hospital, because the state providers won’t do that for any money. They were going to put her in a home, and not a very good one.
I tried to tell the woman the contract was cancelled weeks ago, but she said she couldn’t accept that until my mother, who doesn’t remember anything, told her herself.
I had to go and get my mother from her bedroom, and she came down on the stairlift looking blank, then put on a smile and said ‘Hello!’ as if she understood everything, which is her way of coping. Whereupon the social services woman began interviewing her. Was she happy with her new carer…
Did she feel supported… Did she feel safe? And my mother kept saying ‘Oh yes’, and I knew that she was just playing along because that’s all she can do.
As we were sitting there, the doorbell rang again, and when I opened it a small Chinese lady in a nurse’s uniform was on the doorstep. ‘Hello I’m from re-ablement!’ she trilled, as if that was the most obvious concept in the world.
‘Ah! You’re the one for my father!’ I said, then embarked on the near impossible task of explaining to two old people, one of whom has just had a blood clot in his brain, that the woman with a clipboard sitting in front of them was nothing to do with anything, and this other lady was going to sit down and talk to them about sending a nurse every morning, which should have happened a week ago.
The social worker sat there nosily taking notes while the NHS lady began interviewing my father.
And as this was happening, there was another ring of the bell and the private carer, a lovely Italian woman, arrived to help my mother – and she didn’t talk at all, she just squeezed through the logjam of box-tickers and got on with making breakfast, sorting meds and dressing my mother.
‘How you assess outside?’ said the Chinese lady to my father. ‘How do I… I beg your pardon?’ he said, leaning forward. ‘I don’t know how I assess the outside… let me think…’
‘How do you ACCESS outside?’ I shouted. ‘How do you get out?’ As usual, my father told me off for interrupting and ordered me to behave myself as though I was seven years old. While he concentrated on that, I said to her: ‘He doesn’t. Too ill.’ She nodded.
‘I make my notes now, yeah?’ she said, and started scribbling in silence.
The social worker gave up, and made for the door. As she left, I thanked her (for what, I don’t know) and told her that if she wanted to know the truth, I needed a carer.
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