{"id":388625,"date":"2010-03-04T11:53:58","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T16:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/careandsupport.direct.gov.uk\/?p=3083"},"modified":"2010-03-04T11:53:58","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T16:53:58","slug":"funding-%e2%80%93-mary-feltham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/388625","title":{"rendered":"Funding \u2013 Mary Feltham"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mary<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mary cares for her husband Peter as well as dealing with her own deteriorating health.\u00a0 She has experienced difficulties getting funding to help care for Peter, but now uses direct payments to help employ personal assistants.<\/strong><\/p>\n

76-year-old Mary lives in Bristol with her husband Peter, 74. Peter has Parkinson\u2019s and his health has deteriorated over recent years. Mary now spends most of her time caring for him, despite having arthritis and being partially sighted.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife is pretty hard,\u201d she says. “At 5 am I get Peter out of bed and he has his bath.\u00a0 Then I get his breakfast and feed him\u2026this morning that took almost two hours.\u00a0 I\u00a0do the lunch, something simple, and give him his lunch, then sit down for an hour or two if I\u2019m lucky. Then I make his tea, which takes a long time again, and get him ready for someone to come in at 7 pm to get him to bed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Mary and Peter don\u2019t have a lot of savings, they don\u2019t get any financial support for Peter\u2019s care as he had a reasonable pension. Mary finds it frustrating that that the Independent Living Fund isn\u2019t available to people over 65.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s insulting to say people don\u2019t want to live independently because they\u2019re over 65,\u201d she says. \u201cWe are doing it all for nothing. I feel we are being punished because we worked hard all our lives and paid our dues.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She is also worried about losing her Disability Living Allowance, which would affect things like their Motability vehicle. Investigating other potential sources of funding is difficult as they are constantly being passed between health and social services assessments, Mary believes.<\/p>\n

They were advised to get home care for Peter, but decided against it as they would have paid the full cost themselves. They also felt home care would mean living round the timetable dictated by an agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re both very involved in trying be independent,\u201d says Mary. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to be \u2018done to\u2019, we want people to help us to do what we want to do.\u00a0 Because we\u2019re old we\u2019re not idiots.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mary thinks professionals should respect the knowledge of carers. No-one knows Peter\u2019s needs as well as she does, but she feels that this is not always appreciated.\u00a0 She feels that professionals she deals with sometimes don\u2019t understand what it is like to be a carer.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know about the isolation and the worry unless you\u2019re the one who does it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Because Mary is disabled, she has been assessed as needing respite.\u00a0 For the last five years has received a direct payment\u00a0for her respite needs.\u00a0 This helps to employ two personal assistants to care for Peter for a few hours each week, giving Mary a much-needed break.\u00a0 But they still have to use their pension to pay for much of the support they need.<\/p>\n

The personal assistants also take both Peter and Mary out, giving them more opportunities to do things together.\u00a0 Because they have a continuing relationship with the same personal assistants, Peter is more at ease.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI am very into direct payments,\u201d says Mary. She thinks more older people could benefit from using them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Their direct payment is managed by the West of England Centre for Inclusive Living (WECIL), a local Centre for Independent Living. Set up and run by disabled people, it runs the payroll for Mary\u2019s personal assistants.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t dream of doing it without WECIL,\u201d she says. \u201cThey are very supportive. They know what they\u2019re about.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe advantages of direct payments are without any doubt the freedom it gives you.\u00a0 It is that independence\u2026I don\u2019t want to be told what time Peter\u2019s going to get up or have his lunch\u2026it\u2019s a choice, it\u2019s completely different\u2026we choose what we want.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mary cares for her husband Peter as well as dealing with her own deteriorating health.\u00a0 She has experienced difficulties getting funding to help care for Peter, but now uses direct payments to help employ personal assistants. 76-year-old Mary lives in Bristol with her husband Peter, 74. Peter has Parkinson\u2019s and his health has deteriorated over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}