A lesson from my mother

Time is invaluable

A lesson from my Mother.

Time given is invaluable, love immeasurable.

This morning my 97 year old mother (with dementia) was unusually chatty on the phone. 21 minutes is almost a record for her. She was telling me about one of her memories that she visits when feeling lonely in her care home room. She was a Salvation Army Care Home manager for 4 years in Johannesburg, South Africa. The clarity of her memory from all those years ago amazed me. Not only did she run the home, do the books and paperwork, manage the staff and buy the food, she also visited every resident every morning and evening. On top of that, she raised enough money to buy the house next to the home and converted it into residential care because the waiting list for care was so long.

It must be painful for her to see how care homes operate now. There is little time spent with individual residents, as it is more economical to gather them together in the lounge where one carer can watch them all. My mother cannot walk and chooses not to be transferred to a wheelchair to join them because she says they leave her in the chair too long. It takes two carers to transfer her safely and so she must wait until two are available. It is not bad management but lack of funds. This is because care homes are tied up in expensive bureaucracy imposed by the Care Quality Commission, NHS and Social Care. When the Care Quality Commission springs it's visit, it is three days of going through procedures and paperwork and ends in a ten minute visit to one resident. It is not the residents that matter to the Commission, misnamed "Care Quality", inasmuch as it is not your health that matters to the NHS (the test, prescription and vaccine agency). The social care services of County Councils are more focussed on how little or cheaper care that they can get away with, than caring at all about the person they're there to help. I know, I battled with them for 10 months. It's the same everywhere, bureaucratic box ticking exercises and endless assessments. Did you have an annual blood pressure and cholesterol test? But never, "Do you have any quality length of conversation or company every day?". Time is money and out of the question.

I know many of the carers and management at my mother's care home. They are lovely but thinly spread. How we care for those that cannot care for themselves, is a reflection of society in general. As long as a person is fed, medicated and watered in the sequence required, job done. Service provided. Bill from the Council to follow.

The giving of our time to others is invaluable. Our children, our elderly, our neighbourhood. Loneliness can kill, as clearly shown in the Scottish COVID Inquiry, but doctors do not write the cause of death as, "isolation due to protocols and guidance", because that's not on the list of medical conditions.

https://open.substack.com/pub/biologyphenom/p/scottish-covid-inquiry?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=kq88a

Neither is isolation a worry to Social Services. A time-strapped carer twice a day for 10 to 20 minutes in your lonely home, will do. Only bureaucrats can remove humanness from humanity and reduce life to a monetary equation.

I am dedicating this short substack, to Sue, a working carer, who saved her mother-in-law from fading away in a care home in 2021, gave up her job and took care of her 24/7, until yesterday, when her mother-in-law died. I know how much that cost you personally, not in money, but in self sacrifice. Bless you for the love and time you gave to her and for the half hour a day you spent with my mother for more than two weeks, when the medical professional declared her dying and abandoned her. You saved them both. I hope that someone spends the time with you to help you recover. No honours from the King for you, but the honour that counts from the King of Kings, whom you serve, as did my mother all those years ago and still does in that little room in the care home, so far away.

The best way to save humanity is to start caring and giving your time. Love in action.