Uphill struggle

After last weeks blog I am hoping that the purpose of my blog is becoming clear. I have never had to deal with so many agencies and jump through so many hoops in my life to get somewhere, the whole process, not just of coping with my Mum's illness, but getting her the help she needed has been such a steep learning curve. Adult social care , social workers, local authority finance teams, care agencies the list is endless. All of this has been so difficult to navigate. I consider myself to have reasonable common sense and logical thinking ( some may disagree !!)  but nothing has been easy to work through and the hurdles that have had to be jumped have been so high. Information isn't passed from care giver or agency to another care giver , you feel like a stuck record saying the same thing over and over.  No one wants to tell you how to get help or how to access services they just want to pass your case on or in many cases just tick the boxes and sign it off , regardless of wether the person involved has got the care they need. This is not acceptable in my mind.  I hate to see people neglected and not treated as individuals - I understand all too well how stretched the system is but I won't allow this to be an excuse for allowing the care or services  my mum receives to fall below the standard that I consider to be acceptable and more importantly safe. The only aspect of the process that took place in a timely manner was Mum's financial assessment. The cogs can turn very slowly if you want to access services but speed up when the cost of those services needs to be paid for. I hope that my blog can empower others who are trying to navigate the system , to give people the pointers to get the help that they need and deserve , as my experience with the CHC proved they were not prepared to assess my mum correctly and that wasn't acceptable, many people probably don't even realise they can be involved in the assessment process and more importantly can challenge the process - I didn't and my Mum had two failed assessments that I was unaware of. No one should be denied the care they deserve and I am passionate about this. Most of those needing to  accessing these services now were the original people who were promised to be cared for from the cradle to the grave by the creation of the welfare state in the 1940s. I just hope that reading my blog can help others to achieve the results their loved ones deserve. Watching my Mum slip further and further away is horrible but I am confident that my persevierence  is ensuring she gets the care she needs which is some small comfort in all this , I can look back on things in years to come and know I stood up for my mum and I worked hard to ensure she wasn't neglected or ignored. I have learnt some hard lessons so far on this journey and I have used these to shape future decisions, Mum being admitted to hospital is now very unlikely because in the absence of a life or death situation I cannot allow her to go in hospital. This view is shaped by her previous neglect while in hospital and the more I talk to people the more I realise her experience isn't unusual and this is so sad. People like my Mum don't have the capacity to speak out and we must be prepared to highlight issues that affect our loved ones in the hope that one day we can have a social care system for people that is safe and effective.