Settling into the care home

The care home was lovely. It was well organised, the storage areas were hidden, there were different areas for residents to spend time in, it was clean, the staff seemed nice, there was a place of worship, a place where visitors could get a hot drink and some snacks and so on.

The Medical Escort completed a handover, made sure that Roger was ok and left soon after.

Roger settled in and his immediate family came over to welcome him back.

We had no idea how to navigate this situation! We didn’t know how long he would need to be there or how to manage things while he was there. Here are some of the things that we had to get our heads around:

• everyone needed to sign in and out
• we needed to ensure that the staff knew if he had an appointment or if someone was taking Roger out for some other reason
• we had to make sure we had enough medication while he was out
• we needed to get them enough notice to free up a wheelchair for us to borrow
• we had to make sure we liaised with the correct member of staff – some were in charge of medication, others organised the laundry, the kitchen staff needed to know if he was going to be out during mealtimes and so on

He didn’t like being there

We soon realised that he wasn’t happy there. There were so many reasons! Here are a few of them:

• Roger said that on a number of occasions, he called for the staff to help him in some way but nobody came for ages
• He decided to keep a wheelchair in his room because when his legs locked, they couldn’t find a wheelchair quickly to take him back to his room – he was left standing in the corridor for ages
• he told the carer that he wanted to wear specific trousers but she dressed him in something else – this caused a problem because it’s not easy to check his leg when he’s wearing those trousers
• his clothes weren’t being put in the right drawers so it appeared as if they were going missing
• one of the carers shaved him but he said she was rushing – we could see the bits that she missed
• some carers were putting things away but they weren’t fully in the drawer or cupboard so the doors wouldn’t close properly – this was bothering him visually
• he said he was sitting in the chair in his room and he wanted to get into bed, so he pressed the bell to ask for assistance and somebody came, turned the alarm off and said they’d come back but they didn’t
• we had repeatedly asked for Lousie to be the main point of contact but they kept calling other family members
• we complained multiple times and were asked to inform them in a particular way but even after following their protocols they kept calling others listed contacts
• there were issues with the timing of the medication
• they weren’t refilling the water
• they were overruling what the Physiotherapist had recommended

We went to see a couple of other homes so that we all had something to compare this one with but he decided to return to his flat.

How much did other care homes cost?

We did some research so that Roger could make cost comparisons, as well as, weigh up how he felt after the visits. I haven’t named the homes but I’ve shared some of the other findings below.

Part 6 of 11: ‘Finding a live-in carer’ will be published on 13.02.25