Latest news with #elderlyCare
CNA
08-07-2025
- General
- CNA
Number of residents aged 65 and above in Hong Kong projected to double by 2045
Hong Kong became a super aged society in 2024. Over the next two decades, the number of residents aged 65 and above is projected to double. But there is a silver lining amid the demographic shift. CNA's May Wong reports.
Daily Mail
06-07-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Elderly woman, 89, forced to wait 14 hours for help after a fall before dying in hospital, inquest hears
An elderly woman was forced to wait 14 hours for help after a fall before she died in hospital. Valerie Hill had to endure 'a long lie' on the floor after she fell and broke her thigh at her care home, an inquest was told. In the end the 89 year old had to wait over 14 hours for an ambulance, before later dying in hospital from pneumonia. The coroner has now warned about 'intolerable' ambulance delays in the Labour-run Welsh NHS. After the inquest jury reached a narrative conclusion, Graeme Hughes, Senior Coroner for South Wales Central, found that the volumes of people waiting for ambulance vehicles has 'reached intolerable levels'. The coroner who led the inquest had now warned Wales' First Minister, Eluned Morgan, that hospital delays and lengthening handover times are having 'devastating' outcomes. This has led to an 'acute concern' among the area's coroners, he said. Welsh Ambulance Service Trust (WAST) have a 15-minute handover expectation, yet evidence shows that this is only reached 10-20 per cent of the time. Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board (CTMUHB) was found not to be 'the worst in Wales'. Mr Hughes submitted his Prevention of Future Death report to the First Minister of Wales who has until August 9 to respond. The inquest heard Ms Hill fell at her care home in Treharris, Glamorgan, and was eventually taken to the Royal Glamorgan Hospital. Mr Hughes said: 'Valerie died on 11 March 2022 at Royal Glamorgan Hospital, following a fall at Ty Bargoed Care Home on 7 March 2022. 'She endured a long lie on the floor of over 14 hours whilst waiting for an ambulance to attend. 'It is possible that this long lie exacerbated known medical conditions. It is probable that the lack of risk assessments completed and referrals for Valerie during her time at Ty Bargoed meant appropriate precautions were not taken to prevent further falls. 'It is possible, due to long ambulance handover times across Cwm Taf Morgannwg Health Board and inadequate systems in place to effectively manage patient flow that this contributed to the long lie. 'In answer to my question to him as to whether a situation akin to that which Valerie faced on 7 March 2022 could happen again today, he (NHS Deputy Chief Executive) accepted that that was a fair conclusion and that the same risks remain in the system. 'My concern is that this disconnect is having a significant effect upon how the system for conveying acutely ill patients in the community to hospital is operating and changes are indicated to address this system dysfunctionality.'
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Silver Linings: Why am I still here?
'Do we believe in euthanasia?' Marriner Rigby asked me. No, I replied. We don't. 'I didn't think so,' he replied. Marriner lives in an assisted living center. He went there a few months ago. He is a talker and can get around with a walker. He's talked to most of the residents of the center. Many of them, he tells me, question why they are still alive. Not in a morbid sense, perhaps more perplexed than sad. 'I hear lots of complaints from people who live here,' he says. 'People tell me they are tired of living. That's why I asked about euthanasia. All the residents here used to be 'somebody,' but now most people here feel like they are a 'nobody.' They don't know what to do with themselves. They are just waiting to die.' Marriner was a school principal for more than 35 years. He knows how to listen to complaints, how to be empathetic, how to soothe others' concerns even when there isn't much he can actually do about their circumstances. He understands what it means to connect — and he is a master connector 'Some of the residents here can be very demanding,' he says. 'The staff members are expected just to 'take it.' There's lots of staff people here who get yelled at by residents and ignored by others. I listen to both sides.' 'There are troubles everywhere,' he continues. 'I try to make things easier by sharing a funny story or giving a compliment or asking about their day. Staff people here are supposed to help me. But I try to turn the tables and help them,' he says smiling broadly. 'People here tell me they are just plain tired. They have a gloomy outlook and can't see any way that things will ever get better,' he says. 'In some cases, they have family or other regrets but feel there is nothing they can do about them. Or they have other disappointments about missed opportunities.' 'I don't give them platitudes,' he says. 'I just listen. Sometimes I tell them to write a letter or make a phone call. Mostly, I'm just a friend. It gives me something to do and I think others are happy to see me.' Like Marriner, Faye Mathews is in her 90's but is still living independently at home. Children and others visit her daily or call her on the phone to find out about her day. Her husband Dick passed away 3 years ago. Dick and I were friends. His passing and our loss has affected both Faye and me. Faye has a pacemaker in her heart, macular degeneration in her eyes, and now walks only with the aid of a walker. She uses a walker to steady herself in getting from room to room because she doesn't get out much. 'I don't know why I'm still here,' she said wistfully during a recent visit. 'I can't do much and I'm really no good to anyone. Besides, I'm ready to go' She notices my concerned look and raised eyebrows, then continues. 'My kids tell me that's crazy talk. But what good am I to anyone?' she asks. 'What do you kids say when you tell them that?' I ask. 'They tell me that I've earned this extra time. But for what purpose?' she asks. 'When I get to the other side, I'm going to ask God 'Why?' Why did I spend those extra years just hanging around doing nothing?' Faye spent her early years in Cache Valley. But when she and Dick married, they lived around the world, residing not only in Texas and New Mexico but also in Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines. Their house is like a comfortable museum set piece with paintings and artifacts from the many places they have traveled to and lived. 'I used to be busy, so busy that I rarely had time for myself,' she said. 'Now, all my time is for myself. But I can't do much. It's hard to adapt to this role reversal.' Despite this change, she's determined there is now a new role for her. But what? Perhaps subtle, perhaps less physically demanding, yet still in some way significant. 'I think maybe I'm a little like a human talisman,' she mused once. 'I have several talismans — objects that are viewed as significant by people in an area — from different countries including beaded wall hangings from Nigeria that ward off evil influences and jewelry from Pakistan that are supposed to bring good luck. They are like a rabbit's foot or a four leaf clover. Nobody really thinks they bring good luck, but nobody who has one is ready to toss it out, either.' Faye has five children, dozens of grandchildren, and a growing number of great-grandchildren. She once had prominent positions in her community, her church and with expatriate organizations around the world. Like a talisman, she holds a special place among family and friends. In a unique way, paraphrasing and reframing the words to a once popular song, people who know her might say: 'You say it best when you say nothing at all.' Or, like 'Ma' in 'The Grapes of Wrath,' it now seems that her influence is based less on what she says or does and more on what she represents. Steinbeck wrote about Ma's influence this way: 'Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm… She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. 'And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials…. 'She seemed to know that if she swayed, the family shook, and if she ever deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall apart, the family will to function would be gone…And so from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean, calm beauty.' Perhaps at any age we long for purposeful living, for meaning and belonging, for a chance to show our worth is so much more than our net worth. Perhaps we build micro-communities wherever we live — assisted living centers or traditional neighborhoods. Perhaps we don't 'find' meaning or purpose so much as we 'make it.' Perhaps our value is not simply just by what we do, but at least as much in who we are.
BBC News
30-06-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Covid inquiry begins examination of impact on social care sector
The Covid inquiry will start examining the impact of the pandemic on care services for elderly and disabled people on Monday. Bereaved families say they have been waiting for this moment for years, describing the way Covid swept through care homes as one of the clearest and most devastating failures of the pandemic. Nearly 46,000 care home residents died with Covid in England and Wales between March 2020 and January 2022, many of them in the early weeks of the pandemic. The government says it supports the inquiry and is committed to learning lessons from it. There are key questions families and care staff want answering, including why the decision was made in March 2020 to rapidly discharge some hospital patients into care blame this, in part, for seeding the virus into care homes in the early stages of the are also questions about blanket "do not resuscitate" notices being placed on some care home residents by medical services, and about visiting policies which prevented families seeing their loved ones for months."It was an awful, awful time," says Maureen Lewis, manager of St Ives Lodge care home in northeast home cares for up to 35 people, many of whom have dementia. When we visited earlier this month, some of the residents were sitting round a table in the dining area, making brightly coloured collages of flower baskets. Staff and residents sat cheek by jowl chatting to each other. This was a huge contrast to our first visit on 15 April 2020. Then, staff were dressed head to toe in protective suits, their faces covered by masks. It was three weeks after the UK locked down to try to stop Covid spreading. Despite this, St Ives Lodge had just lost six residents in a week."That was the hardest. And that was right at the very beginning of Covid," Maureen remembers. The ones they couldn't saveWhat guidance did care homes get? On 17 April 2020 the number of deaths in care homes reached its peak, with 540 people dying in England and Wales in one Ives Lodge had locked down in mid March, but a resident who had returned from hospital developed Covid symptoms. Those who sat at the same dining table as him quickly showed the same signs. They died within seven days of each other. The home later lost another resident to the the time, Maureen described how doctors and district nurses refused to come in, how care homes struggled to get protective equipment (PPE) and there was no helpful guidance from government."We were like a mini hospital," she told BBC News, "dealing with end-of-life care... Googling what to do". It was an experience described by many other care home managers who felt abandoned by the government and NHS in the early months of the pandemic. Looking back, Maureen says: "There were no protocols, no testing and [the NHS] was basically getting rid of any residents back to care homes. They were discharged as normal, but we were in a pandemic."She wants the inquiry to find out why such decisions were made, and she wants those in positions of responsibility held to remains angry with the former Health and Social Care Secretary, Matt Hancock, for his statement on 15 May 2020, that the government had "thrown a protective ring around care homes". "There was no ring of protection for care homes at all," she says. "He needs to take accountability for the decisions he made." Mr Hancock is due to give evidence within the next few days. It will be his seventh, and likely final Jean Adamson, the evidence which will be heard at the inquiry over the coming weeks will be the most important father, Aldrick, died with Covid on 15 April 2020. The last time she saw him was when, whilst she stood outside, she glimpsed him through the window of his care home a few days before he passed away. She was devastated she could not be at his side."We weren't allowed to say goodbye to him, to hold his hand," she says. "It's an experience that will stay with me forever. There is no grief like it."She too has questions about the policy of discharging patients to care homes. On 17 March 2020 the NHS sent a letter to all hospitals telling them to free up beds. Over the next four weeks, an estimated 25,000 patients were discharged into care homes many were not tested for Covid. On 2 April 2020, the government advised "negative [Covid] tests are not required" before patients were discharged into care was changed on 15 April 2020, the day Aldrick Adamson died. New government guidance said anyone discharged from hospital to a care setting would be tested first. Jean Adamson believes patients who arrived at her father's care home from hospital could have seeded the virus there. Other factors such as staff moving between care homes and the spread of the virus in the general community will have played a part but, she says, the rapid discharge of patients to care homes without them being tested or isolated was a choice. "It was a reckless decision," she says. "The way that my father and tens of thousands of other care home residents were sacrificed. It really gets me because I think it smacks of ageism and disability discrimination."In the five years since her father's death she has become an active member of the campaign group, Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice says the group wants the inquiry to look at the ban on care home visits that kept families apart for also want answers to why some people were "routinely placed on do not attempt resuscitation orders [DNARs]", without discussion with relatives or an assessment."There was an abuse of the do not attempt resuscitation policy. We need to understand how that came about," she inquiry will also examine the difficulties faced by care workers who supported people in their own phase is expected to last five weeks, with the report not due until next both Maureen Lewis and Jean Adamson the memories of the pandemic remain traumatic and both say what they want now is the truth."We need to understand so that we can learn lessons going forward for when we have the next pandemic and what happened here should never happen again," says would like more recognition of how care services survived without much help. In future, she says: "There needs to be more investment" and better planning for emergencies.
South China Morning Post
29-06-2025
- General
- South China Morning Post
Fierce China job market turns unemployed youths into ‘full-time grandkids'
As China's job market continues to struggle, a new trend in which young people become 'full-time grandchildren' by returning home to care for their elderly grandparents has gone viral. The trend addresses their own employment problems and the growing need for companionship among the elderly. Such so-called full-time grandchildren provide companionship, emotional support and daily help to elderly or disabled family members. Compared to 'full-time children,' who primarily accompany able-bodied parents, 'full-time grandchildren' are often seen as more filial. So-called full-time grandchildren can turn an elderly relative's day into a fun experience. Photo: Shutterstock One such 26-year-old who was unable to find work after failing her postgraduate and civil service exams accepted her grandfather's invitation to return home.
