Horror. Please read and say what you think

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We all know these facts. What bothers me is that for old helpless people is that there is only a vague request for a “culture change”. In the Arctic and in Africa if the family cannot take care of a family old and helpless member they put it out of the igloo or the hut. Is our approach, of dumping old people in “care houses” any better?

Here is a report on UK care-homes. (from the Guardian)

Vulnerable elderly people are being subjected to neglect, abuse, discrimination and ill-treatment in the hospitals and care homes that should be looking after them, according to a report published today by a parliamentary committee.
The study by the joint committee on human rights warns that many older people are facing maltreatment ranging from physical neglect so severe they are left lying in their own faeces or urine to malnutrition and dehydration through lack of help with eating.
Lack of dignity, especially for personal care needs, inappropriate medication designed more to subdue patients than treat them, and over-hasty discharge from hospital are also causing suffering for many older people, the MPs and peers conclude.
The MPs and peers also call on the government to address concerns about the rapid discharge of patients from hospital to meet government targets, even when a suitable placement has not been found for them.
Examples of abuse and mistreatment cited in evidence to the committee:
• "She grew very thin and it was obvious to visitors that, although she had always had an excellent appetite, she found great difficulty in feeding herself. Visitors would have been only too willing to help but were discouraged from staying during meal times. She appeared to be slowly starving to death."
• "I went to visit my husband on the first day and he is a very private person, he doesn't like anything to embarrass him, and when I went in he was almost in tears which is not like my husband. He said 'please, please go and get a bottle I am nearly wetting myself'. I rushed out, I got a bottle and I said to him 'well, why didn't you just ring the nurse?' in my innocence."
• "For an hour and a half I've been asking for a bottle. Well, when I went out and told the nurse she said 'Oh don't worry - we would have changed the sheets'. Now his dignity at that stage would have gone out of the window - there was no dignity."
• "An 80-year-old woman was seriously sexually assaulted by another resident in 2004. It was reported in the log book but no action taken. It was only reported to the resident's daughter in July 2005. She reported the matter to the police."

My Mother has worked in an old peoples home for fifteen years and gets somewhat annoyed by these reports.

They suggest the negligence lies with the staff and the staff alone. What the media neglects to tell people about is the abuse that the staff frequently recieve from the residents of the homes. In the past my Mother has been hit, kicked, bitten, spat at and verbally abused by the people she is trying to help. Nobody likes to mention that though, the truth doesn't make a good story these days.

On top of that matters aren't helped by the appalling lack of staff and the poor quaility of a lot of what staff there are. 80% of the staff at my Mothers workplace arrived in the UK from Eastern Europe in the last three years and have a very poor grasp of English, as well as, in some (though not all) cases, being very shoddy workers too. Throw in a couple of workers from the Phillipines on top of that and you'll see that this home has the grand total of three part-time English staff out of a team of nearly thirty. In addition, the pay recieved by staff is shockingly poor for what is expected of them. No wonder some nurses and carers neglect their duties - they would get significantly more money by going on the dole. How can a home be adequately run on the strength of all that?

No wonder I seldom listen to the news. Complete nonsense.

If between old people and the staff there is some kind of class warfare I don't think that the responsibility is of one of the two sides. That old age is taken care of in an indecent way is out of question. Not necessarily it is the fault of poorly paid nurses, but it is an unacceptable way to let people die.

My mom cared for two relatives who died of old age at our house.
My father put his mom in a home but he visited her everyday. She
(my grandmother) did say how she thought it was great how my mom took care of her relatives at home. (my parents were divorced).

I wasn't aware i'd mentioned any kind of ''class warfare''.

Obviously I do not condone the abuse of older folks in any way, but I do believe that the media view on this (and thus the view that is fed to those who believe all the claptrap that is spewed out by the papers) is entirely skewed. These days what people here can be completely dictated by those who have the power. I doubt any of these journalists will have ever worked in this situation.

By all means people can report on the shocking treatment that (a tiny minority) of the elderly recieve, but it is unfair to brush under the carpet everything else that goes on in these places. There are just as many nasty pieces of work living in Old Peoples Homes as there are in outside society. Painting OAPs as all sweetness and light is just as incorrect as painting all teenagers as rude, binge-drinking, oversexed neanderthals.

It's not a journalistic feat, it the report o a parliamentary commettee. Such situations exist in the US e in Europe and their reason lies in public underfunding, and in the disintegration of any kind of extended family.

Which has been blown out of proportion by the media.

Parlimentery committees are all well and good, but they only sit round tables and tell people what to do. They aren't down there in the nitty gritty of it all so, in all honesty, they haven't got a clue. They just live in this little governmental dreamworld where everyone will jump to their feet at their command. I could write a report that had all the use of one by one of these numerous committees. They only exist to make it look like the government are doing something.

On the extended family point. Family life in general has been destroyed in recent years because there are greater incentives to not have one. These incentives were brought in by the same government that is now interfering in the care system.

Theres logic for you...

I am pretty sure that in the Arctic they don't let the elders suffer (by leaving them out in the cold to die) and I am pretty sure they wait until they are on their deathbed to euthanize them. I am from the North BTW.

If you think about it, it is efficient. Old people suck and just take up resources. Everyone reaches that age where they become useless, it is a fact of life.

You tell that to my 67 year-old grandmother (who practically raised me) and her 90 year-old mother.

In African cultures, elderly people are valued and aren't treated like they're useless. They are looked upon as being wise and having experienced it all, have knowledge we younger folks don't have. I wouldn't be the person I was were it not for my grandparents, great-grandparents and my now deceased great-great grandmother.

It is utterly criminal elderly people are disrespected and abused in nursing homes like they are. Remember, we all will be old some day. Do we want to be treated like that when our time comes?

I think you covered everything I would have said just perfectly, so I'll second that.

I will live in a shack with a thatch roof and a dirt floor before I ever put my parents in a warehouse for older people-aka nursing home. They have loved and cared for me so much, it would be almost criminal to put them in one.
Aradford, older people DO NOT suck. They are valuable assets to our society because of the years of faithful service they have given to it and their immense wisdom and knowledge. Most are also very caring-as an Aspie, I have found older people to be much more accepting of who I am then those in my generation-I'm 24. And so, I will seize every chance I get to serve them in any way I can.
Oh, keep in mind that you will someday grow old. How would you like it if you'd served society faithfully for many years..only to be told that you suck and are a drain on society just because you grow old?

My mum lived with her parents when they couldn't fully look after themselves and while they were dying.

Beyond that, I don't have any experience and no informed opinion, but I can't help thinking that you don't become a nice person just because you get old and if people don't care much for them when they get old, it could be because they were @rseholes when they were younger

people are living longer than ever before. it presents a problem. the average age expectancy 150 years ago was probably 50, you know. it's not something society has had to deal with previously, so they just stumble their way thru it.

i guess it's one of the reasons i continue to smoke. i don't want a really long life. not longer than 70 anyway. ugh nursing homes. i used to deliver flowers when i was young and the stench of urine in those places, the sadness. the horror.

It's my understanding that the situation with the Inuit (eskimos) in the arctic is widely misunderstood.

Life in the arctic was rough. Starvation was a normal part of life for those people. Often there was no alternative to people dying from hunger, the only question was who it would be. When this happened, it was expected that grandparents would sacrifice their own lives by going off to die so their children and grandchildren could continue to live.

Why are old people treated with such contempt? Because we've engineered a world where everything they've learned is obsolete. Guess what, we're next.

That sort of thing has been going on for ages. While it's terrible at least the people left outside in the Arctic will freeze to death in a few hours. Don't think I'm terrible for saying that. I'm just saying freezing allows them to not suffer abuse for long. That's better than what seniors experience in nursing homes in the US. My greatgrandmother was beaten till she bled to death in a nursing home. Prior to that happening I had heard she was not being given food regularly or helped with bathing or changing clothes for a week at a time. A man across the street was beaten by one of those in-home nursing staff till he died mysteriously one day.

If anyone has seen the Michael Moore movie Sicko it shows patients being dumped out in the ghetto still in hospital gowns and sick being dumped out on the side of the street because they don't have insurance.

oh man i saw some f-up'd sh-t on the news this morning, some woman in baltimore was abusing a 90 year old man and it was caught on vhs.

throw a rope over a branch and hang that b-tch i say