They were very good; there would be, there’s a coordinator who is obviously in the offices and they, they coordinate all their carers and communicate and, and if a carer has been delayed then we usually, I mean occasionally we didn’t, but we would usually get a phone call from the office coordinator to say, you know, so-and-so’s going to be running, you know, a quarter of an hour/twenty minutes late so, you know, tell your mum, tell your dad not to worry, they are on their way yeah. So that was yeah, that was good. But, you know, it boil, everything, everything in the process boils down to good communication; I think you know, so long as people communicate on a two-way basis it’s, it works but you can’t, you have to keep your expectations real as well, you know, they’ve, they, you book them for half an hour or an hour and they’ve got huge workloads and you have to understand that but clearly you obviously want your money’s worth as well, and you’ve got to make sure that they work efficiently when they’re there.

And then not being afraid to challenge, if you like, the carers if you were concerned about something, or stipulating what your expectation was from them as well was very important, you know.

Well again I think this is where the system is wrong that if you’re prepared to make an argument and be persistent, my experience is most times it’ll get through; I won’t say it’ll happen every time but most times it will. But why should it be dependent upon a family member to dig their heels in and say this isn’t right; but somebody else in the same circumstances, possibly in the next room, is denied it. I mean that to me seems to be absolutely crazy.

And then one of the reasons we had to change, we had to change the care company, because there were a few incidences as in an early morning carer gave mum’s tablets to dad and dad’s tablets to mum. So of course paramedics were called and…

How did you find that out?

They told me.

Right. Oh they realised what they’d done?

They, yeah, they realised what they’d done, yeah; and I said, “I don’t want that carer ever going back to mum’s again.” And of course she didn’t.

We, we did have my daughter complained to the manager actually because my other daughter who lives in [City B] she was down and we went in to see John and he was almost flat in bed and the nurse was actually feeding him porridge almost lying flat and [laughs] and [Daughter] said, [Daughter] said to her, “Don’t you think it would be better if you sat him up a bit?” Because he was clearly struggling; and she said, “Ooh I suppose so,” she said. And this was the, this was the qualified nurse…

Oh goodness.

…so, so I mean she could tell that we were quite annoyed. Anyway [Daughter], [Daughter] went down and complained to the manager that, you know, it was appalling that this woman, who was actually the qualified nurse didn’t know. So then a notice went on the wall behind his bed saying, under no circumstances must you feed John other than sitting up; but you’d think that a nurse would know that really wouldn’t you?

Oh I mean we were really clear before, before we went away, you know, when we went to speak to them about, you know, because, as I say, the one carer that we’d had left at this point because of my dad’s sort of inappropriateness [laughs] you know, sort of sexually, he was being a little bit strange with his, after, you know, with his, with the sort of delirium after his UTI and you know, and we’d, we’d not sort of hidden any of that and they said, oh no, they could, that would be OK, they would be fine, but they absolutely weren’t, and in fact we actually we did get refund from that care, from that residential home, eventually, after quite a battle on behalf of mum and dad.

And so just, just tell me about how you, how you go, went through the process of getting a refund from them?

We just, well obviously just complained; we complained about, you know the care and the state that we found mum in. We’d had, paid for one of our other carers to go in while we were on holiday just to visit them, you know, and keep an eye, and so that she’d reported back how she’d had to go in and change mum and things like that and yeah, just wasn’t good enough. So just, no, just complained to local ombudsman and went through a process and eventually they agreed that, yeah, the care had, had been lacking and so they had to refund some of the care, not the whole thing but they refunded some of it, mm.

Yeah, we’ve had difference of opinion, you know, because we do, we have considered at various times moving mum from the care home that she’s in and that is, to a certain extent, because although the care she receives from individual carers is fantastic dedicated and loving and very well carried-out we do find that the pressures the management team put on us sometimes from [name of care home]; that’s, maybe I shouldn’t mention them, but have been we’ve been unhappy with, let’s say.

Do you mind explaining what you mean by that?

We feel that we’re, at various times we’ve been forced to make decisions very quickly and we’ve had our hands, arms twisted, I should say. For instance, when the, and this is quite difficult to say because this is completely subjective. When mum had a fall at [name of care home] and she broke her hip the hospital were recommending that she needed nursing care at that stage the hospital were keen to get an empty bed, to get mum to go somewhere the care home were ringing us very regularly to say, “Well if you don’t go for this nursing room now you’re going to lose out on it.” And that was really pressured on us and when obviously we were most concerned about the care, the immediate care for mum [laughs] when we were very worried about her if she would survive that we felt pressured then. Similarly when we were told before Christmas that mum needed, was, we were told specifically by one person that mum was at end of life and she needed nursing care and then as soon as we moved her the actual nurse at the care home said, “Your mum’s not in end of life.” So we feel that was disingenuous, we feel we were manipulated, I’m afraid so we’re not happy about that.

We tend not to have any dealings with the management at the moment. I find it difficult at the moment because of that incident where I feel that we were railroaded I find it difficult to go and talk to them, because we did have a meeting after our complaint, because we did complain and we had a meeting and that didn’t go as well as it might have done, let’s say. So I find it difficult to trust them, I’m afraid; I don’t particularly want to deal with the management anymore.