Blackmail

Blackmail
V. Exert pressure on someone through threats
E.g. 'You can't have her back until you agree to have carers.'

The story starts like this, social work called asking for my mum to agree to put my granny into a place in Buckie for assessment.

My mum discussed it with me and the rest of the family, I said I didn't think it was a good idea and didn't want her to go. It was only for two weeks, but she has dementia. They say you shouldn't take a dementia patient out of the routine they're in and they're used to. Taking her out of her home, and routine for two whole weeks? Seemed stupid.

Social work called again, and listening to him on the phone while he talked to my mum, I could tell he wasn't going to take no for an answer. She eventually said yes.

When she came off the phone, I told her I wasn't happy about it and even less happy at the fact she'd been pressured into saying yes. She came back with, "It's fine. I've got a while yet, if things change, I'll just call him back and say I've changed my mind."

The "while" she was talking about turned out to only be a couple of hours. This was Friday, by late Friday afternoon, she was booked in. By Monday, she was gone.

Two weeks came and went. There was to be a meeting held on the Tuesday, the day I was due to fly out to Florida, and because the meeting was on Tuesday, it meant that she wouldn't get out until late Tuesday, possibly Wednesday. That worked out quite well, because it meant that my mum could take me down to Glasgow without having to worry about my Granny getting home or anything. But still, it was over the two weeks we'd agreed to.



I landed in Florida and went to where I would be staying and called my mum to tell her I got there safely. During the phone call, she informed me that my Granny wouldn't be getting out for another four weeks, at least. Taking it up to six weeks in total. It was never going to be two weeks and why she'd been told that, no-one could answer.

Already, I was taking the opportunity to say "I was right".

Six weeks were up on Monday (Oct. 11th), today is Thursday (14th) -- On Monday, it was announced that, essentially, she wouldn't be getting home at all, unless we agreed to having carers in to the house.

"Carers?" You might be thinking, "That sounds like a good deal. Extra help, awesome."

Not so much, no.

A few months ago, both my mum and I went to meet Graeme, the social worker, in charge of my granny's case. He was suggesting then that we have carers in and we both said at the time that there was no way we'd be allowing those people back in our house.

For 15 years or so, we had to deal with carers coming into the house. At one point, it was 8 different people, spread over 4 different visits. 8am, 12pm, 5pm & 8pm. These were people who we grew to trust and even call friends. Only to find out they were almost all backstabbing bastards. Telling you one thing and running off and telling their bosses another. Lying directly to your face. One day, we even had a carer come in drunk. Shouting at the neighbours -- and she was one of the nicer people/better carers!

With them coming in so many times a day, it meant that you couldn't go anywhere or do anything, because you always had to be at home for them coming. It wasn't so bad with my Granada, because he was harder to move, go anywhere with. But with my granny, if you want to go somewhere, we can all pile into the car and go. There's no need to plan around it.

Another thing to note is, we're not new to this, we've been doing this caring thing for 15+ years, we know what we're doing, we don't need the help. If we did, we might ask for it. But we really, really don't.

So why are they insisting on forcing us to have carers? Blackmailing us into it, by essentially saying "if you want her back, you've got to say yes to carers"?

From what we can tell, it all points to Lossie. She goes/went to day care down in Lossie. Where they seem to have taken to picking on my granny for no real reason.

Given that she has dementia, and is pretty far gone, she obviously had the things that come with that, such as incontinence. They complain that she's not being showered, despite the fact that she must leave the house still damp, as my mum leaves it to the last possible minute to shower her, so she can be as fresh as possible leaving the house. They once said she had open sores (like bed sores), yet when the district nurse came about three or four days later, she found nothing. Not even redness. Open sores don't heal that quickly. Also, during a meeting they once claimed that the taxi drivers had been complaining about her smell. Funny that, when her own daughter is the taxi driver a lot of the time, and if not her, it's someone she works with. None of whom have ever complained. Eventually, it was decided that, since we wouldn't take carers into the house, carers would go down there and shower her in the morning. They gave up, because she wouldn't let them and they couldn't force it -- My mum continued to shower her every day.



Cunts.

P.S. If you want to hear more of their antics. Click here --  It should be noted that during the 'towel situation', the I asked a carer to back me up on the fact that it was a one time deal and we usually had everything prepared for them coming in. She agreed with me, there and then. Turns out? It was that very same carer that had reported it in the first place.