Sue talks about the first time her dad smiled in a very long time and what this meant. She discusses the positive impact of live in carers on her parents wellbeing. Sue describes the improvements that came about and how it enabled her parents to reconnect, spend quality time with each other enabling her mum to relax and sleep much better leading leading to overall improved health. Her experience underlines the importance of continuous and compassionate care

Transcript:

  How will we know if we’re making a difference or how would you know if you’re making a difference to the people and the life they want to live?

Because hopefully they’ll flourish. But also your feedback, the quality, you know you have, it’s the basics that you can measure it on incidents, you can measure it on illness, you can measure it on hospital admissions, you can measure on all sorts of things.

 That’s your factual stuff. But there’s also the soft stuff about somebody being happy. When we got the first, the live in started, I think it’s end of January, and I think we were on to the second person. Just the second person. So probably was about three or four weeks in. And dad smiled,

Say more about that.

So he hasn’t smiled for a long time. He’s had a lot going on with his strokes and everything else, and in and outta hospital and having a bad time. We thought we were gonna lose him in hospital at one point, and not because he was that ill, but because he got poor care And, yeah.

So he, I think I came over and I said, how’s it going dad? And he smiled and I thought that was massive. And the difference is not only did he smile at me, but he smiled at the carers.

There was a connection?

Yeah. Yeah. And that meant he was happy. And I said, how is it better? And he said, It’s nice not to have so many people coming in and out the house ’cause everyone rushes in and I would say they rush about, but there was often 30 minutes sitting in the kitchen fiddling about on mobile phones. Which I struggled with horrendously. But no, he just, it was just the fact they could relax and having somebody at night meant mum could relax. She wasn’t keeping an eye out for dad. ’cause they sleep in separate rooms. So she relaxed, she sleeps through the night now. They’re both eating better. Having a little wobble with fluids, but, that’s never gonna be plain sailing. But they’ve both been eating better. They’ve, they’ve just been more relaxed really, and they’ve actually, mum’s got outta bed. That’s massive. Mum’s actually having personal care. That’s more massive. Because that was something we never talked about. She wouldn’t accept. But the carers had the right approach. And that’s another part of it.

They had the right approach, but they also had the time to say shall we? And she went All right. ’cause she trusted them. So now she has a wash every day. They have been getting mom outta bed to sit next to dad. ’cause they were so far apart. She had a big bed. He couldn’t move. Yeah. ’cause he’s stuck in his recliner.

So they were just that across the room. They managed, we got another armchair in. The staff managed to encourage mum to get out and sit next to dad. They started to hold hands. They were talking to each other, watching tv, and then she’d hop back into bed in the afternoon.

But they had that quality time.

And what do you think it was that enabled those things to happen?

It was having somebody here all the time. It was the live in care.  It was the live in care, and also have somebody here at night ’cause otherwise I used to be on call all through the night, I literally slept with the phone