Recently I was involved in seeing the closure of a nursing home that my cousin had been living in for over two years, long enough for her to collect her own things around her including her own riser recliner chair and special mattress.
The particular home had been in administration for nearly three years but had I believe been making profit for all of that time, but the administrators decided to ‘pull the plug’ and gave the residents and staff 28 days notice of closure. I am sure you can imagine the consternation of both the residents and staff and those like me relatives of those in the home.
Trying to find alternative accommodation was very difficult, I made contact with 12 nursing homes in the area all of whom were very helpful but 8 of them just had no vacancies at all. Two of the others had vacancies and the other two possibly might have been able to offer a room in the near future but could not give me assurances that they would have had space in time. So I visited the other two homes and made the selection from those as to which one to move Margaret into.
Like all of us though change is not something she really likes and a week and a half after the move she is still very stressed and comparing her new home to the old one, in essence the one she has moved to is better and with better facilities and food and its general aspects but it is not the place which she had grown used to over her time there. I just hope that the stress she has suffered as a result of the move does not make her condition worse or bring on another stroke.
For my cousin though the move has been very straight forward and it is a matter of coming to terms with her new environment but for the other residents it has in many cases been more traumatic, one lady had her 101st birthday on the Sunday and then two days later was move to a new home and was so worried and stressed I am concerned just how much longer she will survive!
The staff of course have learnt to love the residents and have worked very hard to make the lives of each patient better but the thanks they get is that despite making the home profitable they no longer have a job! Whilst with hard work it is possible to find new homes for the residents new jobs for the staff will be far harder to come by!
The nursing homes all over the UK can be heartbreaking places as you see people living out their lives in all sorts of different conditions but providing that they are run by staff and management who have empathy with the residents and care for them properly then they can do wonderful things, unfortunately once banks and accountants become involved then care goes out of the window and heart break arrives!
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