The situation with the care workers got a bit better yesterday after we were visited by some managers rather than just minions. The minions might see that things are going wrong, but they aren’t allowed to do anything, or recommend that we do anything. They are very tightly scripted. Managers have a bit more leeway to try to improve the situation.

So we now have what approaches a plan as to how to make mother’s life as comfortable as possible, under the circumstances, and to move her towards being better able to take care of herself. We may also get help from the likes of physiotherapists, and people who can provide useful gadgets that do not involve spending thousands on making changes to the house.

On the other hand, this is just the care workers. It is clear that the various agencies involved do not talk to each other. Here is an example.

Having had some surgery in hospital, my mother was sent away with paracetamol to use as painkillers during her recovery. Those have since run out. The hospital was supposed to have told the GP surgery about this so that appropriate prescriptions could be issued. The surgery (who appear to have caused a lot of the problems my mother is facing) says they haven’t heard a peep out of the hospital and won’t issue a prescription until they do. They also have no plans to send my mother’s GP to see her, despite the fact that she’s just out of hospital and can’t walk. So I bought some paracetamol, because they are cheap and easily available. When this morning’s care worker found out about his he tutted about taking drugs without prescription and said he could not have anything to do with that, despite having insisted the day before that we must contact the surgery to get more paracetamol.

My guess is that a note about taking non-prescribed drugs has already found its way onto my mother’s file at every single agency involved, because that can be trotted out as an excuse if anything goes wrong.

Anyway, my aunt will be here tomorrow. She has a long nursing career behind her. We’ll see if anyone pays more attention to her than they do to me.