Disempowerment again.

Empowerment-and-disempowerment is the third most read AWD post.

Here's another take on the issue, in a very different situation two and a half years on.

I still believe that it's important to preserve abilities for as long as possible even when it might be easier for us to take over. A current example for me: I've been pre-loading S's spoon and getting her to hold it and feed herself longer than I care to remember. This is incredibly time-consuming and can be very frustrating when she drops the spoon or spins it round so that food drops off. Sometimes towards the end of a meal I feed her the last few spoonfuls and that is a lot easier. But there are now so few things she can do for herself that it seems perverse to stop her doing one of them. It's so easy to disempower someone.

Interestingly, the (very experienced) carer who comes in twice a week always feeds her. As she's generally very good, I put up with this but it makes me even more determined to continue to load the spoon myself when I'm in charge.

Another care system disgrace

This could almost be a continuation of the last post.

The Leonard Cheshire Disability Charity have today done all of us a great service by drawing attention to the fact that a large proportion of all visits to the housebound (many of whom have dementia) by paid carers, funded by Local Authorities, last no longer than 15 minutes.

In fact, it's become clear during the day that in some cases it's even worse than that. As some companies do not reimburse staff for time spent travelling between jobs, many '15 minute' visits are in fact even shorter.

To put it starkly, vulnerable and helpless people who are dependent on these care visits, are often having to choose between being fed or being toileted.

Yet there are some Local Authorities who refuse to fund care visits lasting less than 30 minutes.  So it is possible to have a sane system.

The really depressing thing is that I would be willing to bet that the situation will be exactly the same in a year's time