MY CHRISTMAS FEAR AND SOCIAL SERVICES

As Christmas draws even nearer so my fear rises, especially after my husband’s fall yesterday. We have absolutely nobody to call at all. Everyone and everything is shut down and will be until after the New year. Nicky, our new cleaner cum personal assistant will come on Friday morning for three hours and then that will be it. I dread that moment when she leaves. My brother who is no good at all, as you all know, is refusing to answer his phone and it is not that I want contact with him really but he should be there in an emergency but he will not be. There is absolutely no one in this world whom we can contact.

My husband’s fall yesterday has frightened me and we have been trying to analyse what happened and he says he had not realised how tired his legs were after clearing up some rubbish at the side of the house from his wheelchair. The constant bending put pressure onto his body. So he just got up onto his legs without thinking. We have agreed to put some more grab rails in the hall and into the bathroom area. But that will not get done until into the new year as all handymen are taking time off until the new year. He will make sure now, that he does not get up onto his feet unless he has a walking frame to then hang onto. It is scary, I know.

The last time he fell, in the bedroom, we contacted Social Services and they have a department that is meant to deal with safety in the home for people like us. However, they kept saying that they had put us onto the end of the queue and that we would have to wait months to get them out to look. This has proved to be true. The Re Ablement Team simply gave my husband the names and phone numbers of handymen and told us to get on with it. Then they closed our file as having dealt with it. They had not dealt with it. But this is our country at the moment.

Our Social Care systen is broken. There are people dying because of it. There are people struggling every day. The other day we read of a lady in a Care Home who fell onto the floor and broke her hip. She was just left on the floor for twenty five hours before the ambulance men came for her. They told the Care home to look after her, but they were too busy with other residents as they were short staffed. We have a crisis in our Care Homes at the moments with staff leaving and staff sickness. Many have been dismissed because they refused to have the Covid vaccination. Two hundred in our town refused the vaccination and so were dismissed, and our Care homes are on their last legs. They cannot find a space in Care Homes either, for people leaving hospital who need to go into Care. So they are taking up hospital beds and they have nowhere to go. The hospitals are overloaded and there are no beds even for emergency cases. Relatives are being stretched to their limits. I have heard of some horrible cases just lately.

All of this makes me very very afraid. We are ok and can look after ourselves if things are safe. My husband can cook and so we can eat. We now have this new cleaner but only on one day of the week. But we manage. I just feel so upset at my brother because he refuses even to be there in an emergency.

Christmas will be full of fear for us but I guess we will get through. If only we had family and friends.