Why is it that this nation seems to care so little for its disabled, sick and elderly?Really? Why does Ian Birrel think this?
When Iona woke almost five hours later, the carer gave her breakfast, bathed her and dressed her before the day could begin — just as she has done for almost five years working in our home. But this dedicated, supportive woman departs our team this weekend. She is going home to Poland.Oh noes! What will you do then? Will you look after your daughter yourselves?
So we must resume the nightmare task of searching for replacements. Much of this burden falls on my exhausted wife, who fills any rota shortfalls for the long, waking nights alongside Iona before spending her days desperately seeking carers.Oh, the poor darling! How terribly exhausting it must be to have to find hired help! Why, almost as exhausting as....errr, doing the work herself? For the fruit of your loins?
One friend told me of a superb care home in Plymouth where her aunt died in May, set in a beautiful former convent. It is profitable, highly rated —but faces closure due to staff shortages.Oh, goodness me! Other people in Ian's social circle might be in the same boat! How terrible!
It is all very well saying Britons should do these jobs. But what if the right people are not applying to care for someone with complex needs or fail to turn up for interviews, as has happened with us.You don't seem to understand, Ian. It's not the job of strangers to care for elderly or disabled relatives, whether they come from Latvia or Liverpool.
And it's not beholden on young people today to give up their dreams of law school or veterinary medicine or aerospace design so they can wipe the drool from your disabled daughter's chin so you and your wife won't have to.
Ism't it astonishing how the very people that tell us that the elderly and disabled are vital members of our diverse society who must be cherished are only doing so as long as they can hire someone else to do the hard work for them?
3 comments:
young people today to give up their dreams of law school or veterinary medicine or aerospace design
I agree with you in general but feel i should point that any number of your readers,mostly from that generation now retired or heading that way, got their degrees and professional qualifications after leaving fulltime education (be that at 13, 16 or 18). My Ol'Man hisself started as a teaboy in some lab and worked and studied his way at night school up to Chief Chemist, which for a lad from bombsites of sarf London...he even learnt 'ow not to sound like Michael bleeding Caine everwy time 'e opened 'is norf n south like. Nothing to prevent a young person getting a care job during the day and studying at night, especially as that is the kind of working experience along with qualifications gained as a 'mature student' that really tells employers something, something more than 'oh yaa I spent my gap year tutoring indigenous people in the Amazon about gender equality and plastic coffee cup recycling'. I found myself, that saying I got my 2 A levels at night school when I wasn't caring for 3 small children/babies and an insane wife opened doors at the top university in the land for my chosen subject. No 18 year with two A levels would have gotten an interview, under 3 'A' grades not a chance and even then the Uni rejected 50%+ of applicants at interview.
So perhaps less of the 'giving up dreams' but more an opportunity for those young people to get where those young people want to be; wipe some dribble, wipe some bums, earn some money, not have to live off lentils and fast track your way through the 'entry stages' of that dream job.
Before the EU superstate and unlimited immigration who wiped these bottoms? Who picked the fruit that's now going to rot in the fields? Who served our coffee or washed our cars?
Also on the other side- who groomed our children en masse? Who begged in the town centres? Who put Lebanese loops on our ATM's. Who pick-pocketed our pensioners?
How did we cope?
Jaded
"Nothing to prevent a young person getting a care job during the day and studying at night..."
Nothing except that's hard work. And going out on the lash is a 'uman rite. Innit?
"How did we cope?"
'We' were rather different then. Some say, better.
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