Category Archives: Older care

Time to wipe away the whining about paid carers

May 22, 2012   Carers, Older care

The quality and quantity of care that’s on offer for older people was unimaginable a couple of generations ago

 

We need to connect the arm’s-length overclass with the hands-on reality of being a carer, says Stewart Dakers.

Doris, myself and Charlie are in the cafe across from the bus stop discussing the latest care home scandal involving the abuse of residents by carers. The newspapers are full of recriminations, interviews with ministers, Age UK and emoting relatives. It will not be long before I am “in care”, and so I have an interest in such incidents.

It has often appeared to me that there is an unpleasant taste of self-righteousness among the prosecution, and that they are out of touch with the realities of the care situation. Charlie, as usual, does not mess about: “They’re all bloody foreigners, them nurses. Don’t understand our ways.”

He’s spot on, though not in the way he means. The care staff don’t understand our ways, because most of them come from cultures that view the dislocation of elderly people from their families as barbaric.

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Old films to help recover people’s forgotten past

May 17, 2012   Carers, Older care

Memory Bank

 

It is part of a new project called Memory Bank developed by the Yorkshire Film Archive (YFA) along with healthcare professionals and carers.

Old home movies are being used to help trigger the forgotten past of people with dementia and other memory loss.

It is part of a new project called Memory Bank developed by the Yorkshire Film Archive (YFA) along with healthcare professionals and carers.

Old films have been carefully selected to help participants remember the past.

YFA director Sue Howard said one user had said: “It’s like peeling back the years – the memories are still there, its just needs a trigger.”

The majority of the films being used are home movies shot in and around Yorkshire from the 1940s to 70s, all of which are housed at YFA which is based at York St John University.

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Are retirement villages the answer for the ageing population?

May 17, 2012   Carers, Older care

The social care system is often said to be in crisis. Thousands of people each year sell their homes to pay for the care that the state is struggling to provide. Could retirement villages be the solution for some?

Leslie and Joanne Wolfendale, both aged 89, talk about their experience of Willicombe Park Retirement Village in Tunbridge Wells

Leslie Wolfendale is quite clear. The 89-year-old describes the move to Willicombe Park Retirement Village in Kent three years ago as the “best move we have ever made.”

“We have lived all over – Berkshire, Cheshire and south Wales. But we have never regretted moving here.”

Leslie and his wife, Joanne, moved to the village, which boasts 67 one- and two-bedroom properties, a gym, swimming pool and restaurant, from south Wales where he had worked as a managing director of a manufacturing company.

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