Thoughts of a carer

  There have recently (August 2024) been protests and indeed violent disturbances apparently because of issues involving migrants. I’m not going to delve into the issues that the mainstream media, and politicians, have been discussing; Viv and I have personal, recent, experience of the effectiveness of overseas recruits working in close contact with the public in England.   I have revised this post in case anything I had initially written could possibly have been misunderstood. That I should feel it necessary to do this at 3.30 on a Saturday morning is a sad reflection on modern society.   + + + For years we’ve heard of a ‘social care crisis’: there aren’t enough care workers to fulfil demand; hospitals won’t discharge patients unless care is arranged for them, and the health and care aspect of the welfare state is gradually grinding to a halt. Viv and I have been ‘service users’ (that’s what they call beneficiaries of social care) on and off for the last seven years, all...

  July 2022  I’ve been helping out my sister and my mother recently; like many in their early sixties, I’ve also been looking at my finances, and trying to work out what I might need in the future.  My mum’s situation has given me food for thought - serious thought. After nearly thirty years of retirement she found herself in hospital at the tender age of 89, and the doctors declared her medically fit for discharge - which sounds fine, but she’s really struggling with her mobility. The hospital and social services between them agreed her discharge was ok; social services proposed she should be at home, with four care visits a day to help with meals and dressing. That, basically, is what our health and social care system might provide for you when you’re old and unable to look after yourself.  With the experience I’ve had with Viv, I was horrified - as was my sister. My mum has lived alone for the last twenty five years in a tiny, one bedroom bungalow (that was once p...

  My stepmother passed away last summer; my father had died some fifteen years before. They were both a good age, he made it to 81, she to 89. They’d had a good retirement in their bungalow together, travelling around Europe quite widely, enjoying a good standard of living funded by their pensions which, including their state pensions, were perhaps providing them with combined income of around £40K. I didn’t know details of their income, or outgoings, when they were alive. People don’t talk about money; many, I believe, don’t even think about it in quite the way they should. *** Viv and I have a number of spreadsheets which document our possible finances in a number of differing scenarios. We know what our pension can pay for now; we also, perhaps, are lucky that we don’t have to buy annuities to use them, and can plan to have the amounts of money that we might need at a time in our lives that we might need it. One of the scenarios we’ve considered is that I die in my seventies, le...

 Social care has been in the news recently. As someone who at least likes to think he has some experience of the sector, I've taken an interest. Much of what has been rumoured has not impressed me; it seems as if those in charge have little understanding of the way the front-line social care system works, or of how 'service users' feel.  I've sent a couple of emails to my MP outlining my concerns. 3 September 2021 at 08:43 To: "FULLER, Richard" <richard.fuller.mp@parliament.uk> Good morning Richard Did you see last night's ITN News at Ten? They led with a story about the problems facing care agencies, and thepeople who use their services. Staff are deserting the sector in droves, meaning that some people who need help areunable to get it. Viv, my partner, would not be alive today if it had not been for the help she and I received from Sagecare Biggleswadewhen the NHS failed to correctly diagnose her hydrocephalus in 2017. It's possible that her c...

A few years ago, when I worked in an office, we once briefly discussed pensions. I was staggered that all of the new recruits - clever graduates in their mid twenties - had chosen not to pay into the company pension scheme; they felt they had other priorities, and that they would be able to save for a pension later in life. Anyone in that position now should read the following and perhaps consider where they might be in forty or more years time. + + + This morning I was updating a spreadsheet I keep on Viv's and my pensions. I like to update it every year, tracking our finances and at least making an attempt to work out how long it is that our savings might last. It's something that I think many of us are recommended to do, especially those of us that don't get substantial final salary pensions. To produce such a plan you need to make some assumptions about your financial needs in the future; you need to think about how your lives may change, whether both of you will live i...