Five Point Plan for Care!

Having been involved in the care sector for over 10 years and financial services sector for nearly 30 years, I've seen first hand the actions that work and more importantly, the actions that don't work for families caught in the care maze for the first time.

Based on this experience, here are my top 5 recommendations if your loved one needs care:

1) Keep talking! That means you need to talk to family members about what is going on but more importantly, to the person at the centre of the care need. Whether or not they have a form of dementia, talk to them to tell them what's going on. Include them as much as possible and help to ease their fears about the changes. 

2) Keep smiling! One of the best and most useful things I have learned is "a smile is universal". It is one of the expressions that human's possess that helps put people at their ease and quickly. As 70% of all communication is NON verbal, you need to make sure that your expression is a positive one. By smiling when entering a care home or prior to talking to a person with dementia, you can immediately put the person at their ease. This can make for a much better, more positive conversation or visit so don't forget to SMILE! 

3) Get Organised! You are going to be asked a lot of questions and often, the same questions over and over, as you work through the different agencies involved, Pension Service, NHS, Care Home, Bank, Care Adviser (Yes, we need answers too!). You will need to be organised and have information to hand. Buy two leaver arch files and a set of dividers and get busy! One should be for Property and the other for Health. (This will help a lot with point 4).

4) Get Legal! The agencies mentioned above are unlikely to speak to you unless you have some form of legal authority from the person who needs care. This can be via a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) of which there are two types. Let me be clear on this.......get BOTH the Property & Affairs AND the Health & Welfare LPA. If you only get one, you can bet it's the other one you'll need! These powers can only be given to you whilst the person has the mental capacity to understand the powers they are giving you. It is always better to get the legal paperwork in place as soon as possible and there is no such thing as too early, so make this step a priority and when you become an attorney, keep good records, as per point 3 above.

5) Start counting! Understanding the finances of the person needing care is a vital point to tackle. Again, make sure you involve the person as much as possible as they will undoubtedly be able to offer valuable insight into their affairs. You will need to know things such as whether they make regular gifts to charities, do they own 100% of their property (sometimes a surviving spouse only owns a percentage of their property, with a relative or trust sharing ownership). Understanding the expenses/purchases that are important to the person is vital, be it a certain talcum powder, brand of whiskey, magazine. (see the earlier blog below "what's my line" for further explanation). These familiar items, tastes, smells, textures really do help with keeping people calm in stressful situations.

Hopefully these pointers will help you begin your care journey. For everything else, you can give us a call!

Liz Faye is the Founder and Head of Care Services at Carepal Assist Limited
for further details go to:  www.carepal.org or call on 0800 6891000

Walk a mile in my shoes...

I've met hundreds of people with dementia since we started on our own care journey in 2004 and each person I've met has taught me something new or interesting either about the way they've had to change the way they communicate or shown me how to improve my own communication skills.

I have always tried to smile and be open with each person I've met and have sometimes been rewarded by a smile returned or a hand squeezed.  On a number of occasions, I was unable to even make eye contact, as the individual was so encased within their own world.  As empathetic as I try to be and as hard as I try to imagine, I had no idea what the world looks like or how it fees to them.

With my own Nan, Gladys, when she would loop her sentences or repeat the same names over and over, I knew who she was talking about and could add context to the conversation. Having been close to her all my life and spoken to her about her vast family over the years, even though "Aunty Lizzie" and "Mrs Payton" died many many years earlier, through her previous stories about them, they lived on in our conversations and in Nan's world.

It's always been different with my clients - as much as I've tried to help, you can't hope to have the same impact or relationship in a couple of meetings.  I've often come away longing to find something that I could leave with the families to give them even a bit of what I had with Nan.

And then came along this book, "Elizabeth is Missing" by Emma Healey.

The blurb on the back reads:

"Maud is forgetful. She makes a cup of tea and doesn't remember to drink it. She goes to the shops and forgets why she went. Sometimes her home is unrecognisable - or her daughter Helen, seems a total stranger. 

But there's one thing Maud is sure of: her friend Elizabeth is missing. The note in her pocket tells her so. And no matter who tells her to stop going on about it, to leave it alone, to shut up, Maud will get to the bottom of it.

Because somewhere in Maud's damaged mind lies the answer to an unsolved seventy-year-old mystery. One everyone has forgotten about.  Everyone except Maud..."

This book took me on a journey into the mind of someone with dementia and beautifully and painfully illustrates the impact this disease has on the persons own perception as well as how it affects her relationship with family and friends.

Written from Maud's perspective, the insight is invaluable and I will be recommending it to everyone I come across and each family meeting I go to.  I'll tell them all - everyone who has a loved one with dementia should read this book - it is the nearest you'll ever get to walking a mile in their shoes.

About Liz Faye

Liz Faye is the Founder and Head of Care Services at Carepal Assist Limited
for further details go to:  www.carepal.org
or call on 0800 6891000




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