Options for home help for elderly parents

M

Marine1

Registered User
Messages
17
My in laws are going to need some home help, MIL is 74 and FIL is 78, until literally last week my MIL was in rude health but she had quite a bad scare over the weekend and will take some time to recover so they will need someone in to help with some cooking and light house work, i guess 2 hours a day 4/5 days a week.

Any ideas how best to look into arrange this? Money isnt really an issue for them so at least there is that!
 
Peanuts20 said:
what you can get through the state
Click to expand...
It likely will be less than you expect or need; but you will get the assessment / referral which is where you need to start.

Their main focus is on personal care, getting up / washed / dressed. Cleaning the floor or peeling spuds is not on their list.

You can pay for additional hours also, I'd recommend doing so.

If you have meals on wheels in the area its an excellent service; again need referral from Public Health Nurse.
 
There are agencies that advertise home help also, home instead, Irish home care, etc (I just googled). Plus put up notice in local shop, post office, for locals who are interested. The level of help does not seem to be in the home help area yet, which give help in dressing, eating, personal care such as showering etc, so you may just need a cleaner housekeeper type at present. On the plus side if your in-laws get on well with someone it can be very beneficial if in the longer term they need more hours or care.
 
Fully agree with @Peanuts20 & @DannyBoyD above. It may take a bit of time to get organised but the needs assessment will be thorough. These services and assessments are available irrespective of whether the intended recipients hold medical cards or not.

Not all services are available in all areas. Some of my neighbours had their meals on wheels services withdrawn and podiatry services cancelled due to lack of staff.
 
Without sounding morbid on things, but now is also the time to start thinking further down the line and things like POA and Fair Deal which once they are set up and/or applied for, will sit there until they are needed over the next few years.
 
DannyBoyD said:
It likely will be less than you expect or need; but you will get the assessment / referral which is where you need to start.
Click to expand...
Actually, we managed to get the public health nurse to visit our parents as they are 82 and 79, one has just been diagnosed with mild dementia and the other is quite feeble. We were quite pleasantly surprised by how much was on offer. Our main concern had been that the father is incontinent and was paying for pads for himself at quite some expense, and hasn't the money for it. Someone we knew said he should be able to get them through the HSE. So it turned out there was a few more things they could help with. There is a bit of home help available for some I think, but the problem in many cases is that a lot of older women are still "house proud" and won't let anybody in to clean the house unless they've done it themselves first, even though they are completely unable to do it.

POA is definitely something you should consider now, as it is more difficult later on if they are unable to make decisions for themselves. The problem again might be a reluctance to admit that there are things that they cannot do without help.
 
AFAIK the max number of hours per person per week is 21. So that’s 3 one hour visits per person per day. that’s 42 for your parents.

We have 21 hours for my dad and 15 for mum. Public health nurse inspection etc.

The carers are generally very good and very flexible. They will help with showers and dressing and also peel spuds and set the fire. Some won’t but on the whole they are willing and with some instruction, which mum is willing to provide, will turn their hands to most tasks.

Took a while to get mum to allow a young foreign lass/lad help her around the house but eventually she started to see that she couldn’t do it all herself. And she actually enjoys the chats now over how to set a fire and cook spuds. In return mum has learned lots about their cultures and cooking and dad has enjoyed sharing his 90 years of GAA knowledge with them.

We worked hard to develop a relationship with the company contracted by the HSE. That’s worth doing. We meet with them regularly, my siblings and I and my parents and their manager.

It’s been a journey and sometimes it’s hard but the alternative is a nursing home and this is way better
 
@Purple very true. I wouldn't do the job for any wages, and the wages are crap anyway.

Home help is far better than a nursing home in every respect by all accounts, and also much cheaper for everyone. Tax relief is available at 40% FWIW. They came in for between 20 and 40 minutes at a time I think.

In my experience of carers coming for a parent, the carers were only supposed to help with personal care but they'd nearly be sweeping under your feet and washing your cutlery while you were still chewing. And the chats of course. All the carers were all great really.

But nearly the biggest benefit was just someone coming in at least once a day, with different people coming in. It meant regularly having a different pair of outside eyes (3 or 4 carers over the course of a week I think it was) so more opportunity for issues on any nature to be spotted and reported.

EDIT to avoid waiting an hour @ClubMan no, it's at the marginal rate. I can't post links yet put it's the first line of section 3 of Revenue's page for

Employing a carer​

 
Last edited:
In terms of times of visits some of dad’s carers are there for an hour. And if the same carer is covering both of them (mum has 5 x 30 mins a week) s/he might be there for 90 minutes.

And they have a variety of backgrounds and experiences. A few recent ones we’ve had include foreign qualified nurses where their qualifications aren’t recognised here or where they are working through the additional qualifications they need to work in a hospital here, student doctors from overseas at UDC who need part time work, retired physiotherapist who still want to work part time (he’s great with dad, keeps him walking and is building up his strength), parents juggling work and children.

The constant changing can be a problem but that’s the nature of low paid work.
 
We have really struggled in Kilkenny to get the HSE to give any care hours. Eventually we got 2 mornings a week for my dad's personal care. He is 95 with dementia and my 88 year old mother is his carer. Those visits are 15/20 minutes max and the carer does nothing beyond the personal care.

We asked for a re-assessment after a few months of 2 mornings and the PHN at the time said that she didn't see any decline is his condition. That was simply not true. The mind boggles when the assumption is that an 88 year woman can wash and dress a 95 year old, on top of the supervision, shopping, cooking and general housekeeping. At least they do have a private cleaner once every 2 weeks.

There is no meals-on-wheels service in the area. My mother is now in hospital with a broken ankle and the PHN applied for a full care package for my dad. That could be 7x3 visits. However, he has now been granted 5 mornings a week. I've been told by the PHN that he will never get any weekend care in Kilkenny. It's a black spot. The hospital have requested home care hours for my mother when she is discharged. We don't yet know yet when that will be, and it she will be fit to get home or not. These have now been granted at 5 mornings a week and she's on a waiting list for 5 evening visits. So at least we are getting more morning time for both of them.

We will have to cover most of the care with private carers, a live-in carer or move both to a nursing home. We are doing none of that yet as we are all taking time off work to live with them. We are looking at the latter now and I'm gathering up the Fair Deal paperwork. My father has said he will die in his own bed and will never go to a nursing home. (We'll just have to handle that when the time comes).

There are no family members living locally.

Many friends in Dublin have elderly parents in better condition than mine and they are getting significantly more care hours, and provided over 7 days. Having said all that, even a full care package from the HSE would not be sufficient as they need help with cooking, and more important things like working the tv!

My parents do not have medical cards (other than the over 70 GP visit). It's frustrating to see that they are not getting the services that they are entitled to. Although I have zero evidence for it, it feels like they are being discriminated against because they don't have a medical card...

I'm just telling the story here as maybe it's useful to someone. The bit of a rant helped me anyway!

Good luck to everyone with their situation. We can all only do our best.
 
Last edited:
That’s shockingly bad.
But I don’t think it’s related to not having a medical card. My parents don’t have one either.

We did have a major job initially getting the phn to agree that they needed help. It’s still mostly for dad.
We had to badger the GP to write to the phn to get reassessed at certain points
Mum is currently waiting to attend a falls clinic as she fell and was an hour outside on her own in the cold. She now wears her alarm and carries her mobile phone. We’ve asked for another assessment as we need to increase her hours.

Sadly we’ve discovered the more we do and the more we pay for privately the less the state is willing to provide. But mum was inadvertently sabotaging that by telling the PHN about how her kids were doing so much

Keep calling them. Keep putting pressure on them
Best of luck
 
Annieindublin said:
We had to badger the GP to write to the phn to get reassessed at certain points
Click to expand...
In my experience there is no need for a GP referral, you can contact the public health nurse or the local home care team directly and request an a needs assessment.

Not all services are available in all areas, I am told due to staff shortages.
 
I am living this now...

Mother is getting homecare visits.
Shes of that generation, in that she is racist.... not happy with non-Irish carers calling around.
Its a disaster, as you can imagine.
She also has a big, aggressive Dober-person.
The whole thing is unsustainable.
 
mathepac said:
There is no connection between home care services and holding a medical card - home care services are based on needs assessments, not medical card entitlement.
Click to expand...
Oh yes, absolutely, we know that. Just when there are not enough staff to deliver the services, and a lot of people with similar needs, the care coordinator must do something to decide who gets the hours. I'm just wondering myself what that something could be.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top