If you have an aged relative who may become seriously ill, make sure that someone has a Power of Attorney for health and welfare. Without it you may find that NHS staff will refuse to give you any information about your relative’s condition, even if you are the next of kin. I am finding the staff at my mother’s surgery exceptionally obstructive in this regard. There is a carer form that I could get signed, but to do so I have to get myself, my mother and the doctor in the same place, and as the surgery blocks all access to the doctor that’s proving very difficult.
Of course the same is true of banking. You need a Power of Attorney for property & financial affairs in order to help a sick relative with the bank account. If you don’t have one and, for example, help them with online banking, you could get into all sorts of legal trouble.
Fortunately I have the latter. I note that getting this stuff is a complicated legal process — far more so than strolling up to a notary like you can do in the USA — and currently takes many months, far longer than the people who sorted ours expected. That’s probably because lots of people are suddenly finding themselves stonewalled by jobsworth bureaucrats and need to get this legal bypass arranged.
Update: I’ve just been speaking to the guy who arranged the Power of Attorney for my mother. He says the reason he didn’t advise getting the health version as well is because the NHS will often ignore them.
Just this week my ‘help with breastfeeding babies and Social Services’ help line got a message from a man who’s 83 year old mother has been taken into care by the care home, via Social Services and banned him from seeing her.
We have found him a law firm, but seriously, it’s getting ridiculous. I can only hope the fall out from the “How Dare You Take Your Child To Another Hospital Here’s An International Arrest Warrant’ debacle will open people’s eyes to how much power the authorities can choose to have, and how little power people have to argue back if they haven’t set down the pathway properly.
Also worth mentioning that everyone should set up a power of attorney for themselves, especially ones that covers them if they are alive, but incapacitated, in hospital.
One friend of mine had employed a cleaner to help her mother cope in the house as she got more and more frail. Only to find out the cleaner had popped along to the Surgery one day and got the GP to counter sign that her mother was of sound mind when she signed everything over to the cleaner. She, of course, didn’t find out about any of this until after the mother had died.
It’s best to sort all this out with both parents, and for yourself, well before anyone gets ill.
Sorry you’re going through it Cheryl. *hugs*