Interview 04  

Interview 04

Age at Interview: 60
Sex: Female
Age at Diagnosis: 80
Background: One of two sisters caring for their mother, at a distance and later in a nursing home. Diagnosed in 1992. Carer has taken early retirement.

Brief outline:Distance care difficult as mother refused to accept help. Difficulty communicating with social services. Had to apply for a Court of Protection order to control her finances. Problems finding a suitable nursing home. She twice escaped.


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There is too little understanding of the needs of the person with dementia or their carers.

 



How little we think in terms of if, if sort of middle aged people with middle class ideas making provisions for people with dementia. You may have seen there was a fuss sometime about [county] wanted to supply people with microwave meals rather than 'Meals on Wheels'.  Well not every elderly person knows how to use a microwave. Mother didn't understand about best before dates and that sort of thing. I think there's an awful lot of us imposing our ideas on them.

And it also annoys me when I go to Sainsbury's down the road and there's special provision for mothers with babies, but there's no way you can take an elderly person who perhaps can't walk very far who might wander off. And you park in a disabled sticker place, you know you could be in trouble and no, nobody sort of, there's no provision, we're not, we don't think in those terms. That is one of the big defects that we're not really sort of elderly or dementia minded.

We think, you know, we see parents and kids. We don't see parents and elderly. Because again I am sure you, you have it in your job, my employer's going for maternity leave and paternity leave, but there's no question under this spectrum of going for elderly parent leave. And that used, that used to annoy me because you could have as many problems in that way as you could with kids. So I think we, we're not at all elderly, elderly aware.

Jonathan Miller - Dementia
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