Friday

Spent the day wrestling with my conscience. Reggie had let me know that Mum had been asleep yesterday and that he expected her to be asleep all day today too. I’ve done two visit-less days in a row before but only when Eldest Sister was covering one of them. In the end I took Reggie at his word and didn’t go but that was only because the guilt for leaving her on her own got overtaken by overwhelming physical and mental fatigue and the relief at finally getting something something done around the house.

Not that I got as far as finishing anything you understand. The list of things that need fixing still seemed longer at the end of the day than when I started. At least I’d made some progress on the bigger jobs.

The day was rounded off with a call from Mum’s Social Services team back at home in London. The Home had applied for a new Deprivation of Liberty order and they wanted my view.

These orders only remain in effect for 12 months so the order that The Hospital applied for before Mum was discharged must have expired during the summer. They wanted to know a bit about how Mum had been before she was taken ill. How independent she had been and so on. They wanted to know what I thought of her care at The Home too.

There were some significant gaps and errors in the information they had. The most glaring one was that they had me down as Mum’s spouse. That was swiftly corrected. They didn’t know that Mum had only recently transferred to The Home so had no idea why the transfer had happened.

The question “Do you have Power of Attorney?” was expected.

“No. Mum rebuffed every attempt I made to get her to sign one before she was ill and she hasn’t had capacity to sign one since her strokes.”

The question “And how often do you visit her?” wasn’t expected.

“I’m there every day except for the days when I know she will be asleep and unresponsive and the days when another family member visits”

I didn’t work out why that question had been asked until after the call. There has to be a nominated representative to act on Mum’s behalf if there are concerns about her care.

“That representative can be a family member or we can appoint a Social Worker to do it.”

“If I say I’ll do it, will there be someone I can contact within Social Services to back me up if I can’t get a satisfactory resolution on my own?”

He gave me the name of the section to contact.

“OK. Put me down as Mum’s nominated representative then.”

There wouldn’t have been any point me filling that role if I only visited once in a blue moon.

Author’s Note

My Mum is in a nursing home in a small village in the Thames Valley. The photo is not of the home. I used an AI image generator to give the reader some idea of the home she’s in.

All, some or maybe even none (you’ll never know!) of the names have been changed to protect privacy and hide real identities. If you think you recognise someone then let me know and I’ll edit the post or remove it entirely