The
mornings are fresh and light now and if the weather is not exactly warm, trees
are budding and flowers blossoming. Nature’s sap is rising and it’s heartening
to see Spring on its way but I’m feeling so tired.
My
heart is yearning for travel and new places. The thought of a holiday brings
tears to my eyes. I want to organise some kind of break – for me and my boys
but also for Nick, just to breathe some new air, but we are so busy
fire-fighting to stay in one place that it is hard to plan ahead.
I
need to renew Nick’s Blue Badge this week and drive thirty miles to pick up a
temporary loaned wheelchair from the Red Cross. He urgently needs a new one as
the wheelchair I got him when he first arrived in Sheffield is literally
falling apart. He used to go out on a Saturday with a carer from my old agency
but the wheelchair is so heavy and unwieldy, with a footplate that can suddenly
swing out of place, and Nick is so prone to tipping backwards,
that she slipped a disc using it and was off work for a month.
We discovered
that it was not strictly legal for a carer to use equipment that hadn’t been
serviced, so even if she felt able to return, she is not insured and simply
couldn’t do it any more.
We
could just buy another one but we’ve been advised not to do this by the neuro
service as Nick’s needs are so particular that they say he needs to be assessed
by a multi-agency team. He’s on the waiting list for an assessment but that’s a
long, long list. So for now we’re struggling on with the old warhorse, it hasn’t fallen apart
just yet and it is a lifeline for him to be able to go out.
Meanwhile, I'm pleading for another service review with Social Services and the care
company because a new support plan was drawn up at the end of February to reflect
Nick’s changing condition and his increased difficulty with eating.
Carers
are supposed to come at a **Time Critical** 8pm every night to administer meds, get
him changed into night wear and prepare a hot meal, then stay with Nick while
he eats it.
I see him every day and Simon or I will go in every other evening
and often do the dinner ourselves so we can all have a meal together, but we can't be there every single night so we try to work around the carers.
They’re
not coming at 8pm though: since the time critical plan was issued, they have
been coming without exception between 6.30 and 7pm. We’ve almost made a game of
it, popping in at my old time of “just after the Archers” and more often than
not the carers will have been and gone and Nick will already be in his
pyjamas.
It’s too early for him to
eat, so of course they are not staying with him – and even if they do stay in
the flat while he eats, we have usually found them in the kitchen next door
looking at their phones.
When I challenged one of them about this, she apologised for being late!
It is still very hard to communicate with most of the carers and I have still not figured out how much they do understand. One of them comes from the Ivory Coast so I've been attempting to speak with him in French but my French is probably as iffy as his English so it's kind of desperate measures. One day, I think, I will write a sitcom about all this and it will be ten times darker than anything Jo Brand has yet to come up with.
She also said that they hadn't even known anything about staying with Nick while he ate, and this was news to her.
We
had a review last week for the social worker, two members of the neuro team
and the care company manager to see how the new regime was going. I was so relieved to think we could discuss Nick's care needs and iron out these problems together, ensuring a smoothly running joined up service that kept him looked after and safe. Just one little fly in the ointment - the care manager didn’t turn up. Even though the meeting had been booked in since February.
Now
we have to arrange another one, trying to find a time that everyone can do, and
apart from the pain in the arseness of that, it is extremely stressful for
Nick.
And
me. As a battle-weary sister exhausted from constant chasing and complaining for every little thing, it was a wonderful thing to
hear the social worker tear strips off the care company for the manager’s
rudeness in not turning up to the meeting or even letting anyone know he wasn’t
coming. She was really furious at him for wasting everyone else's time, and rightly so.
Welcome to my world, I thought. But also - thank you so much for taking this on. I am so unused to someone else doing that, and it strikes me that this is what family carers do - we take on so much of the fighting to be heard or taken seriously as a service user, so much of the legwork, the chasing up and all the in-between stuff that somehow doesn't happen otherwise.
She and the neuro team physio both grimaced when I said, Don't Social Services and the NHS teams automatically communicate to each other about service users? Especially the ones with complex needs?
I had naively thought that they would. But both their services are totally overstretched and their case loads ridiculous, so apparently not. We are lucky to have this support but it is in no way joined up, and the pulling it all together and being in touch with everybody is, it seems, my job.
The overall co-ordination and the fire-fighting is down to the person's family, and they all say Nick is lucky to have me.
No wonder I'm tired. You have to be fit to do this job. Pass me my imaginary length of rope and my fire-fighter's helmet, I'm going in.
