British Expats - Please Help Out If You Can

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- - Please Help Out If You Can (https://britishexpats.com/forum/barbie-92/please-help-out-if-you-can-512313/)

Please Help Out If You Can

With the kind permission of Kapri I am writing this to ask for your help.

A member of my family is terminally ill with Multiple Sclerosis.....and his dying wish is to be allowed to stay at home with his wife and daughter to die in peace.
A petition has now been started to give to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street with as many names as possible backing him to remain at home.
I would be totally grateful if anyone would be willing to sign the link below to hopefully allow Pete his last wish:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/PeteRees/

BBC report below

A GP says she may have to give up work to care for her terminally-ill husband because his social services care package could be withdrawn.
Siaron West's husband Peter Rees, 35, has multiple sclerosis and receives council social care funding.
Cardiff Council wants to assess him for NHS care, which Dr West says would not meet his needs. She would have to care for him full-time or put him in a home.
The council said it was working within Welsh Assembly Government guidelines.
Mr Rees' care is currently paid for by a mixture of the council's direct payments scheme and the Independent Living Fund, which matches it, Ms West told BBC Radio Wales' Eye on Wales programme.
This enables Dr West to employ personal carers and assistants as and when needed, enabling her to work part-time and care for their seven-year-old daughter, Catrin.
However, the council wants Mr Rees, who has had the condition for 12 years, to be assessed for continuing healthcare, an NHS-funded care package which would give him up to five visits from district nurses per day, but would mean losing their current funding.
Dr West said: "I fought quite hard at the beginning to get the right sort of care for Pete and I can honestly say that over the last six years I feel as though we've managed to have as normal a family life as possible.
"I've managed to work part-time, Catrin's managed to have some sort of childhood, and I feel as though we've functioned well over the last six years.
"I'm a GP, I can provide a lot of the nursing and medical care. What I need mainly are sitters, people to sit with Pete while Catrin and I can go out and do things.
"The best the NHS can provide would be five visits from a district nurse per day. That in no way meets any of our needs and means that I could not continue to work.

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Complaint

"We've got a package here which is working well for us; it isn't broke, it doesn't need fixing."

Prof Luke Clements, a human rights and social care expert from Cardiff Law School, said arguments between health services and social services over continuing care responsibility were common.

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If I haven't written to you already-or if you are not a friend, then I'm really sorry to have to write to you, but, in March a member of my family, aged 35, will be put into a nursing home, if we cannot persuade Cardiff Council to follow their own guidelines about joint care.

To put it simply, at present he lives at home with his GP wife and 7yr old daughter. The council want to assess him to find if he should in fact be cared for by the NHS, rather than their social services. When they assess him they will discover that, yes he should be- they then have 2 choices, to hand him over to NHS care which will mean a nursing home or to offer joint care- ie he gets to stay at home with his wife and daughter. At present the council are choosing to use the nursing home. Their own policy states that "support can come in a shared capacity".
But, for reasons that they aren't disclosing, they are choosing to ignore this at present. The case has been featured on radio 2, radio 4, radio5 live, BBC Wales, the Jeremy Vine show and had a couple of good spreads in the newspaper, see below.The council is very likely to change its policy in the next 3 years as the Welsh Assembly Government is about to issue new guidance on continuing healthcare, which will call for better joint working between local health boards and local authorities. In England the problem has already been sorted, it is just that Wales is lagging behind.

I would be really really grateful if you would sign the petition to the Prime minister, not particularly because he will act on it because as I've said, the policy and guidelines will be reviewed in the next few years, but because we are guaranteed a positive response, which we can then use to pressurise the council to act NOW for Pete.

Many thanks to any of you who don't know Pete and don't even live in Cardiff- your vote will still count!
Oh, and please only sign it from 1 email address- don't try and trick them or get your partner to sign from the same email as it will only accept 1 vote per email address- so use your work one if necessary!
You will receive an email from 10 Downing Street to confirm your name has been added to the list.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7199745.stm

Thanks, in anticipation of your support

Beth x x :wub: