Monthly Archives: July 2012

Those who are close to me know my feelings about care for the elderly. My father opted to go into residential care of his own free will and having received a good pension on retirement he’s paid his own fees for the last ten years. That amounts to a lot of money when most months cost £2200 at his home. Do the sums – it’s quite scary.
He has been through the Southern Cross fiasco and survived. It was a bit of a blow to realise that the company which took over were also in dire financial straits and were bailed out by a financial institution but we had faith and gave them time. I now do all of his washing as he was sick of losing clothes in the laundry. But recently there have been more worrying issues. A while ago there was no butter. He was served dry bread. There are two issues here. One – in my humble opinion, no organisation should run out of an everyday essential like butter. Two – if it had run out, someone ought to have nipped down to the shop to buy some. Today when I visited the issue was bread. No bread for supper last night (run out) and then again for breakfast this morning as the delivery was late for some reason.
By this time my dad was in a strop. When the bread arrived later, he was offered it but refused in protest. He then went back to his room and opened a can of Guinness and had it for his breakfast.
I know that he can be a bit of a tinker when crossed but I think he is right to be more than a bit angry when he feels he is simply not getting value for money – a huge amount of money actually. It is also worrying that he is losing weight rapidly as he eats less and less. I must add that this is not solely down to the choice and quality of food but also the issues he has with digestion and teeth.
We decided to take my dad in to live with us but need a bigger house. Unfortunately, the house we wanted went to someone else today (that’s a whole other story!). In the meantime we will move him to a new place where hopefully he will be given a better deal.