Ignored and isolated

My mum didn’t like making a fuss. She was reluctant to ask for any sort of help. She’d always been fiercely independent–and more than that–she thought staff had too much work and not enough time. She didn’t want to cause them more work–and that meant that she and her needs were easy to ignore. The behaviour of some staff at Ashlands made this problem far worse:

• Not listened to. My mum had 2 hospital appointments on 2 successive days. Ashlands arranged the transport and I met her at the hospital. At the end of first appointment the doctor said she had no need to come the following day. I took my mum back to Ashlands and told the manager. She said she would cancel the appointment–but failed to do so. The following morning my mother was put in her coat and bundled off the hospital again–despite clearly telling staff that the appointment had been cancelled. No-one took any notice of her and staff could clearly not be bothered to phone either me or the hospital to check.
• Cut-off. My mum’s room had a call bell (in theory!). The official procedure was that this should have always been plugged into the jack on the wall and placed within easy reach. On roughly a quarter of our visits we found the call bell unplugged or placed out of my mum’s reach. On one visit we could not find the call bell at all. We enquired of a junior member of staff (who had come into the room for another reason) who immediately responded “It must be in the nurse’s station”. This gave the clear impression that removal of call bells was a standard procedure. When this was reported to the manager and another senior member of staff they could offer no explanation but appeared very uncomfortable. After my mother had had a serious fall requiring A+E attendance, we visited her on 4 successive days, since she was clearly unwell. On only 1 of these 4 days was the call bell connected. As you’re probably aware, reports about inadequate care homes regularly mention issues with call bells (follow this link for a recent instance)
• Abandoned. My mum could not move round Ashlands independently. Before she moved in we were repeatedly assured she could spend time in whichever parts of the home she wanted and just had to ask to be moved. The reality was dramatically different. Once she had been moved to one location, she experienced lengthy delays (up to an hour) in being returned to her room. One particular member of staff tried to persuade her to remain downstairs, pointing out it was only an hour until lunch. When my mum persisted in asking to be taken upstairs to her room, the member of staff (very) reluctantly agreed–but then left my mother in the always empty upstairs lounge on her own, rather than returning to her room and taking the trouble to transfer her to her comfortable chair. A similar example of what would appear to be vindictiveness from the same member of staff occurred towards the end of my mother’s stay. My mother’s very uncharacteristic description of this incident was to say she had ‘been treated like a dog’. When this incident was reported to the manager, she recognized immediately that something serious must have happened for my mum to talk like this. The fact that my mum also recounted this incident to 2 other people visiting on separate occasions is also very striking.
• Isolated. Because of these lengthy periods spent in discomfort, waiting to be moved, my mum gradually spent more and more time in her room. Many of her meals were eaten there and my mother gradually lost most of the few social contacts she had started to make. In their typical fashion staff failed to spot (or care) that my mum struggled to eat from plates on her lap. It took several requests by me before an adjustable table was provided.