New year , New Challenges ?

Christmas was a quiet affair , we all visited Mum in the morning , she was with the other residents in the lounge and they were all receiving Christmas gifts before their Christmas lunch.  To mum it's just a day like any other but I make sure she has gifts and that we spend time with her.  The care home staff were lovely making everything really festive for the residents and making sure they all had a good day.
We spent the rest of Christmas day at home with Neil's parents just a quiet Christmas day spent with the ones who mean the most to us. Just enjoying each others company but without doubt missing one special person - my Dad , it was hard, our first Christmas without him , especially after last Christmas had been so miserable with him suffering so much. People are right when they say life goes on ,because it does ,but some bits of you stay in the past with those who are no longer with us.
When we visited mum on Boxing day she was in bed which was unusual but the Nurse explained she had the start of a pressure sore on her sacrum so rather than having her sitting they were nursing her in bed with regular turns, this was sad to hear but these type of things happen it just a fact. I was happy that skin inspections had picked up in this and that it was being managed.
The rest of the holiday passed in a blur we visited family in Lincoln and then the weather turned and the rest of the break was spent avoiding high winds and lashing rain.
The new year is often quiet for us I have, as I have got older, just wanted to spend it with family or good friends , no big nights out or lavish celebrations. This year was no different we went out for tea then chilled out at home with a movie and fizz - cosy and relaxed.
Once we got back to work I set my mind to finding out more about CHC ( continuing Health care ) and I was surprised by what I read on line. CHC is a huge resource of money but reading forums etc very little is known about what applying for CHC funding involves and what the process is. Not one to be put off I downloaded the on line CHC toolkit and had a good read through it. In my opinion Mum certainly qualified for CHC funding in some way or another and I was surprised she had previously been turned down for it on two occasions. I set about collating evidence about Mum's condition and how it impacted on her care needs and chatted with the staff at Mum's care home. They all thought Mum received CHC funding already and were very surprised she didn't. I read lots and lots of imformation on line and the more I read the more I realised how hard this CHC money was to access and how laborious the process of being awarded it can be. in the words of one on the nurses , "CHC money is only available if you have one foot in the grave ". I was becoming more and more convinced that Mum should qualify for CHC funding and it was difficult to see any good reason why she had been refused it. I contacted CHC and discussed my lack of involvement in the previous assessment - various excuses were rolled out but I wasn't prepared to accept them and they reluctantly agreed that Mum could be reassessed. I was confident about this , since Dad had passed away Mum had certainly deteriorated and I was sure the CHC assessed would be able to see a huge change in Mum's condition. An assessment was booked and I started reading all I could about the CHC process and how other people in my situation had dealt with it. Some of the stories were pretty grim to be fair and in most cases the CHC assessment team don't come out of it well. I found all this information so useful because I knew the right questions to ask and the important points of the asssessment., I knew Mum was certainly fitting a lot of the criteria to receive funding so  I was ready for the CHC assessor and had all my documentation ready . Bring on the assessment.