Purley

Sorry for whining about this, but sometimes bureaucracy totally ticks you off. My sister says she thinks social workers just wind you up to get their jollies.

Anyway, I mentioned before about my Mom and falling and breaking her hip etc. etc. Well, now she is progressing quite well, but my sister has realized that as she will probably not walk again and as she has an incontinency problem, she will not be able to go home to live at my sister's again.

So - now she is looking for a care home. She has looked at one and she says she refuses to let my Mom live there.

But the thing that really annoys us is that after a whole flipping lifetime when my Mom worked and paid income taxes and contributed to the economy of the UK - they will only fund her care home to the tune of about £227 a week -- while my Mom will contribute £231 out of her pensions. If she goes to a home that costs more than £458 (the total of those two amounts0 anything above that has to be contributed by someone else!! Presumably us.

However, my sister has two mentally handicapped adult sons - the government contributes £2,000 a week for the younger one and he has never contributed one penny to the coffers of the government.

My sister says the bottom line is that old people don't have as much value as young people.

MB-Realtor

That really pisses me off.

Our parents generation (if like me your in your 50's) contributed more to our future than ANY generation before them.

If they lived through the war, they should be looked after, medically and socially, never mind the cost to the rest of us.

That generation really did sacrifice their lives for ours, we owe them so so much.

windward

Not in the West. One of many reasons why Japan is so effing cool as a country.

The attitude will change though. It has to. The 'grey' vote is only going to get more influential.

Purley

My sister has approached the Masons and the Chartered Surveyors Insitute to see if either of them have any kind of a benevolent fund, as my Dad was a Mason for a long while and also had an FRICS - fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. He was also a wheel in the Lions Club so we are trying all those avenues.

Apparently the Masons have got back to her already and she is going to talk to someone next week. People may frown on the Masons and say they are a secret cult or some such crap, but they do really good work and if they are prepared to offer help - we are prepared to take it.

I really do hope that things will change in the East with regard to seniors. Things have changed with regard to work. Lots of companies now prefer seniors because they have discovered that young people tend to come in late, leave early, take time off sick and when they do show up - they are on the phone all the time.

My son is only 33 and he says the young guys they employ at his place - he has never seen such a useless bunch of people. He said when he was 20 he was never that useless. Apparently everyone was told - don't put anything in this aisle because we have to keep it clear for forklifts etc to drive down. He said those kids kept putting stuff in the aisle until they built a wall there to stop them. My son said he wouldn't have built a darn wall, he would have said "the next person to put anything in the aisle can have a permanent holiday!" (got off the subject of seniors a bit!)

lauder99

Hi Liz

I am sorry to hear of your troubles. I am a member of the RICS and the RICS has a benevolent fund type thing called Lionheart. http://www.lionheart.org.uk/default.asp

I'm not sure what they can do for you but definitely worth a contact.

Hope it helps in some way.

Tom

Purley

Thanks so much. I will be sure to contact them. As you say, anything is worth a try.

He was also an FAI. However, by checking on the Internet, it looks to me as though the Auctioneers' Institute was amalgamated with the Surveyors' Inst. some years ago. So I doubt whether there is a separate body to approach there.

Lorna_D

Hi Liz, sorry to hear about your mother. Was your father or mother in the forces at all, maybe SSAFA could help or the British Leigion. Sometimes there are small obscure charities that you have to dance through hoops to get help from try http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk...ties/first.asp

Purley

Thanks. I know that there are lots of charities with money and quite happy to give it away if you only ask. The thing is, there are places that my Mom can afford. One of them is called, I think, Pilgrim's Way, in Maidstone. But my sister said it was grotty. The Manager was totally useless and there were piles of junk on the patio.

As my Mom is 93, I doubt she has very long to live, but you never know. We don't want her in a place where she can get injured again. I can't remember if I told you that after she had the surgery on her first hip on the Friday, on the Sunday she tried to get out of bed and fell again and broke the other hip. After that they put her in a bed close to the floor. Of course, the nurses on the ward have other things to do, and they can't watch her 24/7. She has some form of dimentia. So she forgets that she is not able to get out of bed. She forgets she has broken her hip!

And we have decided that we cannot afford the approximately $800 each a month that it would cost to put her in one of the expensive places. She might live another 10 years and the cost of the home will go up and up and our incomes will go down and down!

So that is why we are looking for charitable money instead.

ann m

Was your mum living with your sister before all this happened? Does she have her own home?

I have mixed feelings on this issue. A very good friend of ours, who was like a nan to my husband and I - she kind of adopted us when she was 82 ! - had a bad fall at the age 92, and ended up in a home. She already lived in a council flat and had to forego her pension towards the costs of the home. She had nothing else, so no-one could take anything else. Therefore, she her care was fully funded and was luckily very good, until her death just over a year later.

My best mate's nan also required a care home near the end of her life. She was in hospital for about 12 weeks prior to being released to a care home. She owned her own flat and had to forego her pension towards the costs. The social services, or whoever it was that my mate's mum was dealing with were very good about things, but the bottom line was that an account was acruing in the background that would need to be paid on the completion of the sale of her flat - which they were advised to put on the market as soon as practical. Sadly, she passed away before that occured - but the initial stress on my mate's mum - to be asked to find several hundred pounds a week was awful (and she could not even contemplate having her mum live with her as she too lived in a one bedroom council flat and was in her late 60's with her own health problems).

Your mum's generation have, I believe, repeatedly been told they would be looked after into their old age. It is their expectation and their 'right'. I don't think my generation believe this would ever be true - and perhaps those a decade or so above me are somewhere in the middle.

If you own assets, you need to hold on to them a) to fund your own care should the need ever arise and b) if there is anything left, to pass on to your family. And if you have been fortunate in life to amass a considerable level of assets, why shouldn't you fund your old age? If you have hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of wealth, why should the state look after you?

If you don't own assets, your care is fully funded - but what level of care can you expect?

The reality for most people comes somewhere in the middle I suspect. People may have a modest amount - which could be rapidly depleted with the cost of health care - and there is nothing to pass on to the family. Why work your butt off in your later years, with nothing to show for it at the end?

I really feel for you and your family at this time lizwil - and I would resort to absolutely any help that is available, from any source!