Are Care Homes A Panacea For Loneliness?
For many elderly people, staying at home alone is preferable to making a move to a care home. That’s a mistake. Andrew Chilvers, from www.bettercaring.com, a unique consumer website that combines a comprehensive care home search engine with stories, tips and an online discussion forum, reports.
As care homes go, Denville Hall is something of an exception. All the residents have been famous on the stage and screen and have been fawned over and pampered for most of their lives. Such luminaries as Laurence Olivier and Richard Attenborough have had long and abiding connections with Denville, which even boasts its own theatre and club house.
Nevertheless, what Denville has in common with other care homes is the capability to provide a stable, caring environment for the elderly in their twilight years. Like all older people, the residents of the home like to be among their peers, to play games together and to talk about the old days.
For manager Julie Bignall the residents might be famous actors, but they’re still people who worry about their infirmities and who get lonely from time to time: “It’s good for people to go to a nursing home with something in common with each other. They enjoy the same things, they reminisce about people they’ve worked with. We want them to live here as they would their own homes.”
“We have a library, for those who are unable to get to the local library.We have games the residents play such as Scrabble and Bridge and the grounds are large with several gardens. We arrange outings and events and hold parties and don’t interfere with anyone; we want them to be as independent as possible for as long as possible.”
Is anyone out there?
Unfortunately for many elderly frail people in the UK, independence can mean long, lonely days at home with little to do except watch daytime TV. And the figures of loneliness among older people recently published by Help the Aged are shocking; each month 300,000 elderly people in Britain spend days never talking to a soul. That’s no contact whatsoever with family, friends or neighbours. Some 1.4 million of them feel socially excluded, while 48% of over 65s claim their main company is their TV. Meanwhile, 150,000 pensioners never leave their homes at all each month.
Many commentators believe care homes such as Denville Hall are vital for helping older people to reconnect among themselves and with the wider community – it’s something that contradicts recent government suggestions that people demand more self-help at home.
For Martin Green, chief executive of the English Community Care Association, most people assume that living at home is the best care option, but this can be misguided: “I was recently talking to two ladies who were living in big houses on their own; they were both lonely and scared. Their friends didn’t come around and they sometimes wouldn’t speak to anyone for two or three days. So they decided to move to a Sunrise development.
“People should understand that staying at home is about individual circumstances; if you’re in your own home, you’re independent but older people can be vulnerable. There is a temptation to say that a care home is not the best option, but you often find that it can be the right option. People can then have a balance between independence and communal living.”
Nevertheless, care homes do have an image problem. Regardless of the loneliness, many pensioners would rather stay at home alone than contemplate moving to a care home. Moreover, family members admit to enormous guilt about putting their loved ones into a care home and the strain of simply taking the decision can tear a family apart.
Robert Slaymaker and his brother are typical of children who have had to make that decision: “Both myself and my brother felt very guilty and were devastated at taking mother to a care home – we both cried uncontrollably on the return journey after leaving mother at the home. It was probably the worst and most harrowing day of my life.
“Our mother was extremely upset as she was probably not quite ready for a care home, and she loved her own home and her pet cats. But I could see no practical alternative to the awful situation she was enduring at home.”
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After only a few days Robert’s mother had adapted to the care home and he admits that she wouldn’t want to go back to her life in her old house: “She enjoys visits to shops, garden centres and tea shops where she can relax and watch the world go by, but with the reassurance that there is someone close by to care for her.
“Within days of her entering the care home she had become a much calmer and nicer person. She had the care and companionship that she had craved for years. I was convinced that it was the move she had been yearning for.”
For Robert, this also meant less pressure on the family to provide her care: “A consequence is that everyone is much less stressed. We can continue with our own lives and jobs, and we are now able to take mother out and enjoy her company without all the anxiety involved in her care.”
Part of the problem for the elderly is the idea of institutionalised care and the barrage of negative press by the national media. Anna Maloney, policy and information officer at Counsel & Care, believes it’s understandable that older people would view care homes as little more than 21st century workhouses.
For Anna, the real issue is education: “In the past there was a fear of the geriatric ward in hospital and now that has transferred to the care home. People are taken out of the community and moved away into a place where there is an unnatural way of living at the end of life.
“People want to cling on to what they see as their independence at home, but care homes can give a level of independence that they don’t have or other benefits, more social activities on tap…”
A new generation
These concerns have not been lost on a new generation of care home managers. For instance, many now employ full-time activities managers who take residents away for day trips or likewise bring the local community to meet residents in the care home. This is particularly true of growing links between care homes and schools and colleges.
Marta Tomczak is manager of the Glebe House care home in Kidlington, Oxfordshire. In the past few years she has promoted links between the care home and the local community. She hired an activities manager, Kelly Williams, who organised carol singing last Christmas, with groups such as schools and Girl Guides visiting the home. “We also have a volunteer who’s helping the residents to do knitting,” Kelly says. “We have a weekly schedule of activities that includes skittles for exercise, flower arranging and trips out walking and to garden nurseries. Soon we’re starting a music project.”
Marta and Kelly are not alone in trying to break the illusion that care homes are places where the elderly go to die rather than to live a full and happy life. Many care home managers now have activities schedules and local community support.
For Sara Quick, manager at Willowdale Lodge Care Home, Southend, overcoming the image problem and talking through the irrational fears are crucial if people are to accept care homes as real alternatives to informal care at home: “We had a couple where he was the carer and became very unwell. They were admitted to us and were very very anti coming into the home. But within 48 hours they came round to the fact and thought it wasn’t bad after all. They thought: ‘We don’t have to worry about cleaning, cooking food or being bathed because somebody is doing that for us’.
“What they were worried about was losing their choice – being forced to sit and watch daytime TV, and get force-fed grub. That’s the illusion people often have.”
And it’s an illusion that care home managers are hoping to shatter as the care debate continues in the UK. Nevertheless, with adverse publicity and a new government initiative soon to be launched for self-funding care in the home, managers will have to go the extra mile to give care homes the image makeover many of them believe the industry deserves.
Additional reporting by Dan Parton.
