My experience in business was limited to IT aspects of modern day commerce, but one thing I became good at as a manager is recognising when you can't do everything yourself, and then finding someone to help.
This is always best done as early as possible: trying to secure resources to help a project is not easy if the whole project is stalled and you're in fire-fighting mode just trying to answer questions from those on high.
That, I thought, was pretty much common sense ... so why are so many people reluctant to ask for help with caring, early on when the help can be most useful, and most easily set up?
The mother of a friend is suffering from Parkinson's. She's in her eighties. Her husband has been looking after her on his own all the time she has deteriorated since the diagnosis eighteen months ago. She can barely stand now, struggles with a commode, and sleeps much of the time. He is devoted to her, but he is of a similar age; how long can he carry on? More importantly, who will help her when he is unable to?
Perhaps they think that, should he be taken ill, social services will be able to wave a magic wand and sort everything out; that is being hugely unfair to the social services staff, for they will do their best, but I'm sure they would prefer to have more time to arrange a care package for someone they have had little contact with to date. Surely, if our friend's father spent some time looking into care agencies, finding one he, and his wife, liked, and started them coming perhaps once a day, to help with chores or personal care, they would both be in a better position should he become unable to do everything - and, the chances of that occurring might be reduced?
Do many people live under a delusion that 'the state will take care of me' and therefore not put any thought into what might be the best way to help themselves?
Are politicians partly to blame for continually saying how wonderful the NHS is, how much the care sector costs and how much more it is going to have to do in the future, implying it os going to look after everyone... shouldn't they be telling us all to think of ways we can help the care sector prepare for our care, and how we can help ourselves?
(Why not have a requirement that you only get help with care if you do the exercises that your physio tells you to do .... muscle wastage is perhaps one of the biggest problems causing people to become unable to help themselves ...?)
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