Hello everyone!
Please can anyone one advise me???? I asked for a carer assessment to help with my son's medications when I'm at work. I'm pt and I only have to go in to the office one or at most two days a week when I have teaching to do. As I'm a lecturer I can manage most of the rest from home (by internet/email etc) apart from the odd meeting. My partner works from home when I go in to work and we basically share our childs care. However I have a few problems....and wondered if any of you could advise me what to do, expect etc...
The biggest problem is that every three months my son has 2-3 weeks where he's on intravenous antibiotics (IV's). He has these every eight hours and it takes about one and a half hours each time. I get up early and do the first and can usually get to work on time, and of course the last is at 11pm, so I'm home then. My partner has not learned how to do the IV's and although he's willing and able to do just about everything else, he's not really qualified to do them whereas I am an ex-nurse so I don't have a problem.
What I can't do is get home from work to do the middle dose at about 3pm. The community nurse was a bit reluctant to agree to helping out as 'it takes a long time' and she's busy. I was hoping the assessment would enable me to insist someone qualified comes over to do the middle lot of IV's on the days I have to be at work. The IV's don't fall into convenient times like holidays and can total as much as 12 weeks a year, so I can't just not turn up at work, or I'll not be able to do my job. My employers can't be faulted and are very supportive as are my colleagues, but basically I just want to go to work and do my job.
So I asked for the assessment to enable me to work and still be sure essential medicines are given while I'm out. I don't get carer allowance because of my earnings and can't really afford to leave my job, also it's a career that I enjoy and keeps me sane.
The woman who was going to do the assessment said she wanted to meet my son, and I said no, as he has enough people prodding him at the hospital every month and also I don't want him to hear me say things like I want someone else to do his IV's as I want to go to work. I think he'd feel even more guilty about being ill than he does already which is totally unfair. I got the impression she wasn't interested unless she met him as she said she'd have to assess him as well. I said I thought not, as she wasn't medically trained and knew nothing about his his illness or IV medications and was supposed to assess my needs as a carer, not my son.
She wanted to come out to the house, but I made an appointment to see her at her office as I thought she was just a bit too keen to intrude and all I want is to be sure we can rely on a few days a year of specialist peadiatric community nursing support, about which she will probably know very little anyway.
Am I being unreasonable? What should I expect? We have never seen anyone from social services before but she did seem to be a bit of a 'do-gooder' who gave the impression she would know better than me what help I wanted.
Any views welcome, BW, Jess
Please can anyone one advise me???? I asked for a carer assessment to help with my son's medications when I'm at work. I'm pt and I only have to go in to the office one or at most two days a week when I have teaching to do. As I'm a lecturer I can manage most of the rest from home (by internet/email etc) apart from the odd meeting. My partner works from home when I go in to work and we basically share our childs care. However I have a few problems....and wondered if any of you could advise me what to do, expect etc...
The biggest problem is that every three months my son has 2-3 weeks where he's on intravenous antibiotics (IV's). He has these every eight hours and it takes about one and a half hours each time. I get up early and do the first and can usually get to work on time, and of course the last is at 11pm, so I'm home then. My partner has not learned how to do the IV's and although he's willing and able to do just about everything else, he's not really qualified to do them whereas I am an ex-nurse so I don't have a problem.
What I can't do is get home from work to do the middle dose at about 3pm. The community nurse was a bit reluctant to agree to helping out as 'it takes a long time' and she's busy. I was hoping the assessment would enable me to insist someone qualified comes over to do the middle lot of IV's on the days I have to be at work. The IV's don't fall into convenient times like holidays and can total as much as 12 weeks a year, so I can't just not turn up at work, or I'll not be able to do my job. My employers can't be faulted and are very supportive as are my colleagues, but basically I just want to go to work and do my job.
So I asked for the assessment to enable me to work and still be sure essential medicines are given while I'm out. I don't get carer allowance because of my earnings and can't really afford to leave my job, also it's a career that I enjoy and keeps me sane.
The woman who was going to do the assessment said she wanted to meet my son, and I said no, as he has enough people prodding him at the hospital every month and also I don't want him to hear me say things like I want someone else to do his IV's as I want to go to work. I think he'd feel even more guilty about being ill than he does already which is totally unfair. I got the impression she wasn't interested unless she met him as she said she'd have to assess him as well. I said I thought not, as she wasn't medically trained and knew nothing about his his illness or IV medications and was supposed to assess my needs as a carer, not my son.
She wanted to come out to the house, but I made an appointment to see her at her office as I thought she was just a bit too keen to intrude and all I want is to be sure we can rely on a few days a year of specialist peadiatric community nursing support, about which she will probably know very little anyway.
Am I being unreasonable? What should I expect? We have never seen anyone from social services before but she did seem to be a bit of a 'do-gooder' who gave the impression she would know better than me what help I wanted.
Any views welcome, BW, Jess