It's easy for the professionals to make promises...

....but delivery is a different matter. Most of the support promised has failed to materialise - 'it's been referred but the woman who deals with it is away for twelve days now' - and there are clearly many people ahead of us in the queue for things like 'aids and adaptations'. Not a big problem in that particular case as I have organised vinyl floor covering in the bathroom and handrail on the side of the stairs that hasn't got one.

The only professional who has visited was a psychiatrist who saw S when she was in a really bad way and assumed that she was like this all the time. I'm finding that an awful lot of assumptions are being made. We mentioned to one senior nurse who visited that S was eating sweet stuff to be told that 'they' develop a sweet tooth. Well, some of 'them' may but S has always had one. I keep having to remind myself that the Prof always told me that I was the expert on caring for S which was/is comforting but I always feel that there must be some professional somewhere who is prepared to really look at the whole person and find ways to make a difference. I have been lucky enough to find such people on an internet forum and even at a distance they show more understanding than most of the professionals locally. And even the Prof, a leading expert, seemed unable to offer much positive advice when we last saw him.