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We constantly hear reports of poor quality social care in the UK, but when Harry Ferguson's mother was terminally ill he was astonished by the compassion and professionalism of her nurses and social workers Hardly a week or even a day goes by now when we are not told about how awful health and social care is, especially for vulnerable older people. Yet there are other stories that need to be told and learned - like my experience of the superb services my mother received when terminally ill. Mum was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer 10 months before she died at the age of 75. It was always her wish to die at home, and my five siblings and I cared for her. The help she, and her carers, got was a wonderful mixture of the practical and the emotional. As the illness progressed and she became less mobile, occupational health provided more and more aids to assist her. The electric powered bed gave her great comfort, literally, as she no longer had to use her failing body strength to sit up in the bed. Eleven days before she died, a social worker visited and did a care assessment and, by that afternoon, a care package was in place. It sounds so bureaucratic, a "care package". But it couldn't have been more humane and person-centred. Two care workers came in three times a day to move her in the bed and help with attending to her personal needs. My siblings and I were initially very worried that they might not take care of mum in the way that she would like. But mum was very positive about them from the outset. By now, it took two of us to lift her and make her comfortable, and we needed the carer's expertise and practical wisdom. District nurses had been coming in from time to time for months, but in the final two weeks were doing so daily. A specialist district nursing team also came in at around eight or nine at night. As with the care workers, it wasn't just the range of their technical knowledge but the manner in which they applied it to mum and the relationships they developed with her that was so wonderful, and deeply moving. Deep respect They got on to their knees by the bed to address her face to face. They caressed her hand to comfort her. They always addressed her by the name she preferred and spoke directly to her, even when she was deep in sleep or apparently unconscious, and they never spoke about her as if she wasn't in the room. They handled her weak body with deep respect and endeavoured at all times to allow her to make decisions about her care, even toward the end as she drifted in and out of consciousness. The most crucial issue was pain management and, no matter how weak she was, mum was always asked how she was feeling and consulted about whether to increase her medication.
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