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You and Yours - Transcript 大象传媒 Radio 4 |
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TX: 09.01.08 - Looking After Mum PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON REPORTER: WILL YATES |
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THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 大象传媒 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. Interview with Tony Robinson Robinson Both my parents had dementia and I realised during the course of that quite what a vacuum there was where protection and concern for the infirm elderly should be. And by the time my mum died I was pretty angry about the whole thing. The way we treat the infirm elderly in this country is probably the biggest social scandal that there is within the country and I believe that in a hundred years time people will look back on the way that we treat the elderly now with the same kind of shock and horror that we look back on child labour and think how could they have done that, how could they have had that blind spot, they had so much going for them and yet they totally ignored this sector of society. And particularly at this time what baffles me about it is that the generation, by and large, who have Alzheimer's now and are in care are those who fought in the Second World War, they're the ones that all the political rhetoric is about - what a great generation, what a thank you we must give them - well couldn't we thank them 365 days a year, rather than just on poppy day? Yates How exactly would you characterise though this lack of care for elderly people - I mean is it an attitude? Robinson They're completely marginalised from our society. I mean one perfect example is that if you foster a kid what are you going to get - around about 350 quid a week. If you are in charge of looking after the care of an elderly person you get 48 quid a week. And if you earn more than a hundred quid a week, apart from that, then they're going to take it back from your pension. What a big thank you that is for sacrificing your life in order to look after an elderly person. Secondly, the lack of training that there is for helping to look after elderly people. Most of the people who have responsibility for the care of the elderly are just a gnat's above the national minimum wage. And there's virtually no integrated training into what they do. Yates What difference would that make if it became a prerequisite for anybody who worked in a care home to have at least some understanding of dementia in order to engage with people with dementia so that they can still enjoy life? Robinson My mum didn't just have a relationship with me, she had a relationship with virtually every member of my family, although she could never remember who they were. She knew who I was, I suppose because I'm an only child. I don't think she ever remembered who my son was, but she would flirt with him outrageously, there's part of me in shock and horror thinking how can this woman flirt with her grandson, how disgusting - and that was wonderful and that was really great. And when we were in the room and other people who were strangers were in the room she felt much easier and therefore would tend to communicate with them more and show off a bit with them more. And I think that was true of the people who were providing her care too. Once she got used to them, once she recognised their faces and if they were skilled enough to stop her getting frightened then she could be really relaxed with them. The problem came I think when there were people who dismissed her if she wasn't communicating clearly or stopped listening or pretended to listen or pretended they were talking to her when they really talking at her. That just freaked her out and do you blame her - I think that freaks everybody out. But I think it's possible, provided the will is there, to provide a kind of training which helps you to listen to people, which helps you know the right way to frame questions to people, which helps you to know what to do when you don't really understand what they're saying. There aren't very many places which give elderly people that kind of experience. Yates Given that is it not therefore make it a very difficult personal decision for you to - always these phrases don't they - put your mother in a home? Robinson Oh why did you do it, how could you have done it? Well the first thing to say is that for most of us when that decision comes about we are exhausted, we are at our wit's end, you don't make that decision by and large unless you are at your wit's end and all other options seem to be closed off to you. It's not as though you sat down like Hamlet going - To be or not to be - you're in a state of crisis and the one thing that you're offered which is likely to relieve that crisis is a care home. And I don't regret the decision that I made - putting my mum in a care home. I don't know what else I could have done. I'm not saying it was a great option, I'm saying it was the best possible one out of all the limited options that were available, none of which were any good anyway. Yates But inevitably with that decision there must have been some guilt thinking that on one level, surface level, the right thing to do would be to look after my mother at home in my house maybe. Robinson Most people I know who have responsibility for people with Alzheimer's have guilt going most of the time, some level of guilt somewhere inside themselves. For a start a lot of people who've got Alzheimer's behave in such a difficult and distressing way and they're not often like the person who you once knew, so there's a kind of rage at this person that you're confronted with - how dare you take away my mum, how dare you take away my dad and you're making me feel really upset and really nervous and really tired. A great cocktail of guilts, I think, swirls round most of us. And one of the frustrations to me about this whole issue is the fact that we don't talk about it enough and all over England there are people carrying this huge sack of guilt about with them, thinking that they're really lousy people when all they really need to know is that virtually everybody else who looks after someone with Alzheimer's feels exactly the same way as they do. Yates But there's also within that - there's also a feeling that if you can let her enjoy the moments then that in the long term is worth it, is that the sort of process you went through? Robinson Yeah I think when we're doing well, whether we're the carer or the person that we're caring for, it can be so rewarding and it's not just rewarding for them, it's not just like an act of charity, but there's so much that we can get out of it too. My mum was always very larky, she always liked having a good time and I think my memories of her in that old people's home - it sounds daft really and I'm not supposed to say old people's home, that's not particularly PC now - but anyway - is I would buy a sherry trifle from the local supermarket, which she always liked and I remember kind of feeding it to her because taste is something that tends not to go as fast as the other senses and I could see her really relishing it and during the relishing it I'd be taking the mickey out of her and talking about what I'd done and she would occasionally say something back to me between swallows. And that was good because it meant she didn't have to say much and because she could never get to the end of a sentence just saying two or three words with her eyes twinkling and full of sherry flavoured custard was actually rather a fun thing for her to do. Yates Now with the ageing population it's a well publicised fact that almost across the board people realise that social care is not being particularly well provided at the moment and all the criteria for eligibility being squeezed and people dropping off the end of the care system. What do you think should be done fundamentally about tackling this problem because we do have an ageing population and this problem's not going to go away? Robinson I know this is Radio 4 and I know that we're supposed to be very measured when we discuss this kind of thing on Radio 4 but I think that we should cut the crap. I think the fact is that politicians now are beginning to talk all the right talk about Alzheimer's and care in the society - it's great - but at the same time they're closing down the funding. Over the next couple of years care services in most local authorities will be at a standstill. If we want more money for Alzheimer's from the Department of Health where are we supposed to get it? It's just going to come at the expense of other great initiatives within the Department of Health. Things will only get better and the right kind of funding will only come on stream when the care of the elderly comes as important to politicians as currently inheritance tax is and education and things that politicians feel the electorate want. It's down to us - politicians will only act when they know that if they don't act they'll lose our votes. We have deeply betrayed this generation and the only silver lining, as far as I'm concerned, is the next generation - my generation - who is the rather selfish post-war me generation but who also is much more highly educated - we're going to be next. And if anyone is going to stop that happening it's going to be our generation. But I do think that in order to prevent the same abuses happening to us as are currently happening to our parents we've all got to stop being polite about it, we've got to start getting dirty. I want to be the first person who's sacked as an ambassador for the Alzheimer's Society because I've started breaking windows and chaining myself to metal railings. Back to the You and Yours homepage The 大象传媒 is not responsible for external websites |
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