Hi, I’m hoping someone can help me find a carehome for my mum which caters for someone with Parkinsons who needs some help with mobility and basic tasks and gets very tired but is mentally very astute and wants to interact with other similar people. The carehome she is currently in does not seem to be able to provide this. I’d welcome any advice from other carers or people who are in residential care.
Hi Cathy, and welcome to the Forum. Before this lovely community weighs in with their valuable experiences, we wanted to officially welcome you to the group. Welcome! And of course, in case you didn’t know, you can find lots of resources on our website at Parkinsons.org.uk – like this page here with some general advice on finding carers and care homes. Also, if you’d like to speak to a trained support specialist, feel entirely welcome to call us at 0808 800 0303.
Best of luck and best wishes!
Jason
Moderation Team
I feel I may soon be in the same position with my mum she’s 86 with Parkinson’s for 14 years. She’s not got dementia but has increased mobility issues/ toileting/incontinence/medication problems. Atm we are managing by her being in a retirement village and we have care calls and I get her up in the morning and put her to bed at night.
I can see within the next year or so we’ll need residential care…. But everywhere I look the only care homes I find have elderly people with dementia whereas mum still had a good level of communication and is very sociable. She would be mortified if she went into one of these homes. Advice gratefully received. Thx
Hi @alih ,
Read your post about the concerns of finding a care home for mum. I would like to ask did you visit any homes ?
Care homes and nursing homes should be able to look after a person with parkinson’s disease. Even though we think care home has only elderly patients with dementia, but it is not the reality. In a care home or nursing home they have different categories of patients like early onset dementia, patients with complex care needs , patients with complex care needs without dementia etc etc. Most of these care settings has been divided into different units and they place the same category of patients together. I believe there won’t be a problem to go into a care home where gas only dementia patients but you needs to visit the place and find out how is the situation there. Same like Parkinson’s disease early onset dementia patients and people not reached in the advanced stage of dementia are able to maintain good communication and interaction.
My advice is ask advice from council or social services . Also if mum needs increased care needs she might be able to have nhs continuing care assessnent , which can be arranged via gp, council , social worker etc.
Where ever she goes make sure the staff are aware about the importance of get it on time every time the PD medications.
Hope this helps.
Thank you
Tinku.
Thank you for your reply, I’m feeling quite stressed tonight. My mum has not had a good day. We can’t seem to get the meds right, she goes from not being able to perform basic tasks very well to being so fidgety that she keeps falling and is struggling to feed herself without spilling food everywhere. All the pd nurse says is to experiment with the meds and their timings to try and help. I want to try and help make things better for her but it seems impossible…