I asked around of various friends, and the friend who’s the private carer, and she recommended two places in [city]. She said there’s the, a nursing home in [town], which is supposed to be very good. And we’d also thought about that for my father-in-law, because his, he was a mason, and if you’re a mason you get into that one and it’s very good. And then, she also mentioned [care home]. I’ve heard of [care home] before, and my partner, who’s self-employed builder has worked there, and a few years ago… And he came home, and he said, “We should put our names down, it’s really nice, we’ve got to live somewhere in our old age.” I thought well, if, you know. And it does, and they do, and they are lovely, so helpful when you contact them and everything. It’s just the waiting list. But because, I’m really glad I have put my father’s name down, because although he hasn’t asked for any help like that yet, and I haven’t even told him, to be honest, but if he does say, I think it’s time, then at least, you know, he’s on the list now.

Well again I spoke to people that I knew, colleagues and people who had been through the process or who had got parents or partners or whatever in care. So I talked to people and got sort of recommendations or, oh don’t touch that place with a bargepole type thing, you know. But so I got that sort of anecdotal stuff. Again use, I used sort of my sort of professional links to talk to people who I knew provided support of this kind; things like the things you can find for yourself on the internet, the checklists of what to look for when you go into a care home, you know and, to be honest, they’re helpful, I’m sure, and they’re readily available and they do mention one or two things that you might not think of yourself, but pretty much what was on the list is common sense and I would; but it is useful to have somebody else saying, have, you know, just, just think about these things. So I sort of had that in the back of my mind and then I basically drew up a sort of list; I researched obviously CQC reports so I knew what, you know, other peo, what they had said about the homes, chucked some out and came up with a list of, I don’t know, a dozen, I suppose and I suppose I must have gone to about a dozen, sometimes on my own, sometimes with somebody else; if it went to a second visit or a third visit I would take somebody, a friend or my mother or somebody with another pair of eyes and I suppose I eventually drew up a shortlist of three or four and went in obviously, went several times to them. I spent a bit of time in each of them, I just sort of sat and; it’s, it’s amazing what you pick up by sitting in, you know, reception or a lounge or whatever and just watching what goes on. Ironically I wasn’t able to do that with the care home that Graham eventually moved into, because it was brand new and so the best that I could do would be to go and talk to the manager who’d been appointed with the nurse, because they provide nursing care, this particular care home. I went to an open days that they had, I visited it. So I did the best I could but what appealed to me was the fact that it was a uniquely specialist dementia care home and I thought well that was probably, I would hope, give, you know, the best quality of care that we could afford.

Specialists in the major hospital discharge schemes. So this lady came to me and I have looked it up, they obviously still function, and her job was to help me she, because the hospital were saying, “He’s got to go home.” And I realised that he was taking up a bed that he didn’t need. So she was, it, that was very good because she asked me, you know, “Whereabouts do you want to go? What, you know, how far are you prepared to tra, you know, travel?” All this sort of thing. And so she phoned round homes, well it was only four in the end in the area that I wanted to, you know, I felt was within an easy distance [a] I could drive there in the car but if, for any reason, I couldn’t use the car I could get a bus there because, you know, I felt I wanted to visit him every day, so. And then she took me round to the, she made appointments, and so that made it very, very easy for me, that was very helpful, and she was very helpful. But in the hospital they weren’t particularly helpful, the social workers but she was that was very helpful and she gave me some fact sheets and so really I only saw four places so it, I, which wasn’t that good, but three of the others just weren’t at all suitable, I didn’t think, or I, because it was going to be such a sudden, and he wasn’t going to see it, but then because of how he was I don’t think he would have accepted going to see anywhere, whereas because he was in hospital [sighs] I suppose he’d, I think he realised he wanted to get out [laughs].

As I say, but my, my regret is that, although I’d been thinking about the future and Joe to go into care I didn’t want it to happen really I felt I ought to be able to manage myself but, you know, I couldn’t and that was recognising that I couldn’t manage was quite a big step for me and [sighs] I wish I had started looking at homes and thinking about it before it suddenly happened; that would be my, the main, you know, the main thing that I would, I would say, from my experience to, to do more research before you’re suddenly, you know, don’t think it’s not going to [laughs] suddenly things are going to change and you’re presented with the problem of getting full-time care in a, in a care home.

While they were there, my mum’s still, there I wasn’t, you know, they certainly, they as far as I was aware they never had another UTI, well my mum hasn’t; my dad, just over the last few months of his life he did seem to have some problems but the nursing staff, you know, they did manage it and he was comfortable sort of to the end. But yeah, I do think that obviously having that care there and the nursing staff, their experience made them a lot more comfortable probably and, yeah, were able to sort of look after them and give them what they needed to sort of, you know; I suppose they need somebody, they needed somebody there the whole time to make sure they were drinking and they were, you know, I mean my mum had been on a fluid chart and all that kind of thing. So yeah, they needed that sort of expertise and support, definitely, which they got there, and which we didn’t, we couldn’t provide in quite the same way, I don’t think, at home; well it got to that stage anyway.

So that really was a difficult decision a lot of to and fro-ing in the family as to where she would actually reside, as to whether it should be a home in her town that she had spent the majority of her married life in or whether she should be somewhere where, which was equidistant from the rest of us but in the end it was agreed that she would be in a home that was close to me as I was the primary carer for her; so we then looked for homes that were close to where I lived. That, then my brother and I then went and walked around various homes and ended up settling on the care home that she ended up residing in.

Because she was in [County B] and we live in [County A] and we had to think about how we maintained contact with her, and it was pretty obvious that it was going to be a lot easier if we moved her to [County A]. So I investigated the cost of care in [County A] around here against the cost of care in [County B]; and this is another case of being a postcode lottery. You get more for your pound in [County B] than you do in [County A]. So having made that discovery the decision of where she was to be was easy; she needed the best care she could afford and we would travel and that’s the way it always was. So we discussed with [County B] finance department how this was all going to happen and because she had a property, although they didn’t take any financial interest in that, their decision was that they would obviously take all of, all of her income, her pensions, etc, but if she was going to go into care and have any choice of where she was going to go she would need to self-fund and that meant selling her place; and the figure that they needed was enough capital to support her for three years.

So I, I emailed maybe, maybe about… Some I looked at the fees or I rang them up and found the fees were so expensive I just thought, ‘Well that’s just ridiculous’. There was one which was £1,500 a week, for example, so I didn’t even write to them. When I’d done that, then I wrote to them; some I just didn’t get replies from so I thought ‘Well that’s not a good sign is it?’ [laughs] The ones I didn’t get replies from. I only got replies from three so I went to, I went to those three. And I think it’s difficult to justify because a lot of it’s a gut feeling when you, because I’d been visiting in care homes where they were and because I’d been in a care home situation a lot, visiting, then I think I would pick up on things that maybe somebody who’s never been in one before, it’s difficult, because you’re more tuned into it and you just, when you’re there you just notice what’s going on around you and you’re just like watching how they interact with people that are there and things like that, and I just had, and it was a very convenient location, the price was, well the other one was the same price actually, the two I was comparing were the same price, and I just had a better feeling about it.

So yes, I was very conscious about keeping costs down, which you, which you feel horrible because, because you see lovely rooms which are a £1,000 a week and you think well yes, I’d like mum to have that room, but you just know financially you can’t sustain it.

I think another thing that people need to be aware of when they’re self-funding is that, yes, you will get your board and lodging, but things like hairdressers, chiropodists, dentists, opticians, you will all have to find those. And that is just something you need to factor in. You know, it is going to add to the expense.

So if people want to go to the shops; we have outings to the local shops every day, Monday to Friday, with our minibus; you have to book for them but they’re free, if you want to go shopping, to different places all the time, you know, morning or afternoon. I don’t go shopping because I can’t cope with the shops, but that’s a facility that people need to know about, and that is free. We do have outings, some of which are free and some of which we have to pay for, it depends what they are. If we go to the theatre or a concert, and they arrange that every now and again; they try and do something every month, you know, two or three things that; we have to pay for the concert but we might not have to pay for the transport, we might have to, it depends. And then we have a lot of activities here many of which are free; I mean we have a croquet lawn, we have a bowls lawn, we have a clubs, you know, which, but they’re run by residents, a lot of them, you know, Scrabble and What Shall We Have and Rummikub and; I run a couple of groups and they’re all free.

But, as I say, I think it should be better than just physical care, it should be, “is this right for them, how can we make the quality of life as in, as the best it can be for this particular individual?” You know, it’s all those stuff that we hear about: personalised care planning, and it seems to me the system’s under so much pressure that that is what tends to go. So I would say to somebody, look out for them, ask questions about how you cater for each person to be an individual, how you make sure that, you know, your idea of an entertainment is not fifteen people sitting round in a room either asleep or sort of in a very, you know, desultory way hitting a balloon backwards and forwards, you know, and thinking that that’s an activity.

So perhaps have a look at, have, go in on an afternoon when they’re doing their activities? [Laughs].

Go in and not be; yeah that’s a very, that’s a very good point. Don’t just go in, walk round the rooms and the bathrooms and say, oh this looks nice and clean, oh they’re, nice cottage pie they’re having tonight, all of which are important, of course, but actually go in and spend time, you know, spend an afternoon there. Go back in the evening, go back at night, see what happens then; I would always say that to somebody, because the staffing is almost inevitably lower, with justification, but, you know go in and look at night. Go in at mealtimes, go in first thing in the morning when, you know, is everybody being made to get up at eight o’clock in the morning in, or by eight o’clock in order to fit in with the staff shifts, you know, or are people, if they say, actually no I think I’m going to have a duvet day today. Are they able to do that? They should be able to; that’s what personal preference is about. So I think you need to put quite a lot of time into it, yeah, and then ask about the systems and processes behind all of that that enables that to happen. and I do think gut instinct has quite a lot to do with it; I think there’s a practical checklist, there’s all those questions, there’s the scrutiny but I think, you know, trust your judgement, I would say and sniff [laughter] but actually, again, that is not, I don’t think in the pla-, from my experience, as much of an issue as people say it is; it can be but, you know, in general. But just how are people, how are the staff interacting with people, you know, is it with kindness, is it with individual attention and support you know, are people, I don’t mean that people are fashion plates but are they well-dressed, you know, appropriately dressed, do they look as if some care has been put into making sure that they’re wearing the things that they want to wear and, you know that there’s evidence of choice being provided, all of that stuff; and you can only do that by sitting and watching, yeah, I don’t think it’s something you go in and you go and see one place and you make a decision in half an hour, no.

There’s… Another aspect as well is one of the things that mum didn’t have in her first care home – well it wasn’t done straightaway – which [county] are hot on, is deprivation of liberty. So this is called a DoLS report for short and it’s where a social care worker goes and visits the individual in the home to look at the circumstances, because those homes will prevent your loved one from being able to leave the premises and therefore there has to be an Order in place. Again that’s quite hard when you’re reading those reports because they have to set out explicitly the circumstances as to why their liberty’s been deprived; but they’re also a good source because they will go round and look at the home and decide as to whether they think they’re getting good care.

I think it’s really hard to find a good care home and you’re very much dependent on the people CQC reports and actually this home, I actually spoke to a lady who’s sister had been residing in it for the last five years. So we did a lot more due diligence on the home, having had a previous understandings as to what happened previously. My sister-in-law’s actually got nursing background and she was very good actually asking.

My sister-in-law was very good at asking end of life care, which is something that actually my brother and I wouldn’t have thought to ask but was really pleased that she did, because having seen that, having seen so many people pass away, end of life care is paramount to me because I wouldn’t want mum to be on her own if, for any reason, I couldn’t be there so.

So that was something that your sister-in-law actually thought about in advance and it…?

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it was helpful, those conversations?

And she asked those questions and we didn’t know she was going to ask those questions but I’m really pleased she did because they give you actually a good feel of the home as to how they, how they treat the individual.