With all the headlines about the NHS bed crisis I really can’t believe what happened to our client this week, especially with the constant headlines about delayed transfers of care.
We as a live-in care provider, have been ready to take a lady from a hospital in Surrey, unfortunately her home was not actually in Surrey. The lady is a self-funder and the family was keen to get her home but couldn’t understand why she couldn’t leave hospital – I had staff ready to care for her, so I visited the ward to see what the hold-up was – unbelievably – the ward staff told me that she had been medically fit for discharge for some time but as she was not a Surrey resident they couldn’t access the equipment for her home that she needed until she was transferred to a local hospital. There were no beds there, so she was, according to the ward staff, stuck.
She is 93, very frail, has dementia and had fallen and broken her hip in her care home. When I contacted the social worker in her normal place of residence (which took the best part of 3 mornings work for her to respond to me) she said that she didn’t know that my client was medically fit and she couldn’t discuss the case because of confidentiality.
Events have taken over and we start the care package next week. My frustration is that it seemed to be nobody’s responsibility to square the circle – she didn’t fit into the system and therefore nobody could do anything about it – or so it seemed…..
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