Category Archives: Older care

Better care for the elderly

May 14, 2014   Carers, dementia, Featured Article, Older care

HERE TO HELP: Decision makers from the health, social care and voluntary sector get together to improve services for the elderly in Hartlepool

IMPROVED services for the elderly have come under the spotlight at a summit in Hartlepool.

Experts from numerous sectors came together to look at how better arrangements can be put in place for older people in the town.

Mounting demands are being placed on services which cater for people with conditions such as stroke and dementia.

And with an increasingly ageing population, the NHS Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) held a summit is focusing on how improvements could be made for vulnerable elderly people in the area.

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‘Will you help me please?’ Carers ignored old lady begging for help over 300 times in an hour

May 2, 2014   Carers, Older care

A 98-year-old woman lies in a care home bed begging for help. She cries out 321 times in just one hour, including 45 times to go to the toilet, but her carers simply ignore her. A month later she died

Alone and unable to move, a 98-year-old woman begs for a someone to help her to the toilet – but her desperate pleas go unanswered for an hour.

Despite care workers being outside her door, it took 321 cries for someone to eventually respond to bed-ridden Yvonne Grant

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Ageing without children: why is no one talking about it?

April 25, 2014   Carers, Older care, Social care

Without family carers, the health and social care system would collapse yet no one is addressing the growing number of older people without family to care for them

 

A new report from the IPPR predicts that, by 2030, there will be 2 million people over the age of 65 without adult children.

In this country, care for older people rests mostly on the backs of family carers. 70% of carers are supporting someone aged over 65. Half of these will live with the person and the majority are of working age, mostly in their 50s, suggesting that they are the children of those they are caring for.

They are a hugely underappreciated resource.

The way family carers are treated is appalling; their efforts taken for granted, the expectation that they will undertake any and all tasks, from giving injections to changing incontinence pads. And all without the help and training given to paid carers, for the paltry amount of £59.75 a week – if they even qualify for it.

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