My mum had a stroke towards the end of last year. She survived the acute phase and is now in a neurological hospital. She’s significantly disabled physically but mentally mostly fine, I would say.
My dad is living alone while she’s in hospital. She’s undergoing physical rehab and making some progress, difficult to work out how much though. She’s in a wheelchair and that doesn’t look likely to change, she has the use of one arm. She’s due to be discharged in about a month’s time.
The problem is that my parents’ house is not adapted for my mum’s disabilities at all. There’s stairs everywhere and massive gaps. My dad has been told that as part of the “discharge plan” a carer’s assessment will be provided. But it’s looking almost certain that they’ll have to make big modifications to the house to make it livable for my mum on a day-to-day basis. But no social worker is in touch with my dad, and it’s not clear who he should talk to. Is it a local GP? The council? So far he’s only in touch with doctors and nurses within the hospital, but keeps being informed that he’ll “be contacted” when the time is right. But if it could take months to do the physical modifications to the house, surely that won’t be enough time?
I’m worried that she’ll be discharged from hospital and only then we’ll get the “carer’s assessment”. Meaning my dad will have to be managing not only 24/7 care for my mum, but also getting builders and trades people in to do the modifications, which could in themselves take a huge amount of time. Has anyone got any experience with how this process normally works?
