That Meeting.

Yesterday (09/02) my grandmother's care manager from the Queens road team to discuss my grandmother's care needs. She brought with her two women from London Telecare, a private contractor who provides care services. Of course these women incorrectly described themselves as Council employees. Although I was not party to the discussion it seems to have just been a sales event. The three of them recommended that my grandmother requires;

Three days a week at a daycare centre at a cost of £45 per day.

Up to 21 hours a week of home care at £16 per hour.

Her home needs to be fitted with an electronic surveillance system consisting of CCTV cameras, motion sensors and panic buttons plus smoke and carbon monoxide detectors all of which will be monitored remotely. This system will need to be specially designed but the cost is in the region of £10,000 plus running costs.

Apart from the initial outlay for the surveillance system the ongoing costs are around £25,000 per year which is completely unsustainable on an income below £10,000 per year. The council will contribute £320 per year.

Therefore the course these discussions will take over the coming weeks and months will have absolutely nothing to do with health and social care policy. Instead they will a relatively simple financial negotiation with the council delegation trying to extract as much money as possible from my grandmother's delegation with a long term view to induce bankruptcy so the land can be brought by a local housing association at below market rate. In a redeveloped form this land will be worth in the region of £2-3 million per year to a housing association. My father is at a disadvantage in these negotiations because he is still under the misguided impression that these people are here to help. The meeting though did remind him that he hasn't actually got the ability to make financial decisions on my grandmother's behalf because this power of attorney business is legally still quite a vague and grey area. In turn this reminded me to catch up on my correspondence because, surely, 56 days is a reasonable amount of time for the police to decide if they are going to investigate what looks like an incident of serious political corruption of a much higher financial value then the entire MP's expenses scandal.

I apologise for the delay in bringing this up but it was quite difficult to discuss it at dinner last night. This is because apart from being under some council offices and some police offices the pub I get dragged to on a Tuesday is also between the local train station and the local football ground. This means that on match days it is packed with drunk soccer fans and quite a few police to keep an eye on the soccer fans. Normally my father and I don't go on match days and last week when we broke that routine it caused quite a bit of needless tension. Last night Swansea city were visiting and their fans, apart from being Welsh, are one of those teams that have a bit of a reputation for trouble. Therefore I was a little more concerned with avoiding accidentally starting a riot. Plus my brother was there so we spent a lot of time talking about his news.