Rose spends 353 per week to care for infirm mother
Bernie Harrington is almost 84 and no longer sound of mind. Rose, 43, has a two-year-old son. She is a self-employed hackney driver struggling to pay a mortgage on a new house in Cobh, Co Cork.
The cost of paying for her mother’s weekly upkeep in a private nursing home is 650. The Southern Health Board helps Rose with the payment to the tune of 142 per week (known as a subvention payment).
Bernie’s 155 old-age-pension brings the cost to Rose down to 353 per week. To maintain her mother’s nursing home care for a year would cost Rose 18,356. Not surprisingly, it is an expense she simply cannot afford. Neither does she have the necessary nursing skills to look after her mother’s deteriorating health at home.
“Before she went into a nursing home she stayed with us for a month, but it was simply not working out.
“She has dementia and I woke up one night to hear the front door opening and her wandering out into a gale-force wind. We live on top of a hill overlooking the harbour. Only because I heard the door opening, God knows where she would have ended up,” she says.
There were a number of episodes that caused concern to Rose, but it was her mother hitting her young son that finally forced her to place Bernie in nursing home care.
“I found a great nursing home for her, Cuskinny Court in Cobh and she was very happy there. Unfortunately she recently climbed over the bars of her bed (no fault to the nursing home) and fell and broke her hip.
“She’s in Cork University Hospital now and is looking at another six weeks in St Mary’s Orthopaedic Hospital,” says Rose.
In the meantime, Rose cannot afford to hold her mother’s bed in Cuskinny Court, but is hopeful of getting it back on her release from hospital. The only drawback is when her mother is discharged, Rose will once again face weekly payments of 353. It is cheaper for her if her mother stays in hospital, but that is not what Rose wants.
She wants the Southern Health Board to increase its level of subvention payment. The SHB, she says, has an 18-month enhanced subvention assessment waiting list, leaving her to make up the deficit in the interim.
It will leave her financially crippled, she says. “I can’t bring her home because I cannot afford to give up work to look after her. All I want is for the health board to meet me halfway.”
