Dementia: A Carer's View

We are grateful to Kelvin for allowing his story and experiences to be featured on this blog.  SLAM is working with Patient Opinion and the South London HIN to help shine a light on dementia care. 

Conversations with Kelvin

Kelvin cares for his mother who suffers with dementia; he is an active member of South London and Maudsley’s (SLaM) service users and carer’s advisory group (SUCAG) for  the older adult’s mental health and dementia services. Kelvin wants to share his thoughts, views and experiences with other carers to get feedback on how we can continue to improve services and to remind other cares, they are not alone.

29th August   Finally realising you are not alone

 One day I took my mum to see her psychiatrist; at this appointment the Psychiatrist said “Kelvin, I am more worried about you than your mum”. He could see I was really struggling and was becoming so angry as I didn’t really understand what was happening with my mum and had no idea at this stage where I could go for help. The psychiatrist referred me to Social Services who sent me some information about Carers Lewisham and that’s when things started to get better. At Carers Lewisham there were people there who understood the emotional side of being a carer. Not a professional carer, but a family carer, where there is no clocking off, there are no bank holidays, the shift is 24/7 and it’s like the British weather, no two days are the same. The people at Carers Lewisham understood this and for the first time I knew I was not alone.

Since then I have gone on to work with other carers and working with SLAM to try and improve things for people with dementia and their carers. With the SUCAG group we have developed a six week course called “If only I’d known”. This course aims to cover the topics that we, as carers, know that new carers might struggle to find out about. Things like how to get a diagnosis, how to get the right money advice and looking after yourself as a carer.

http://www.slamrecoverycollege.co.uk/courses.html

I have agreed to start this blog on Patient Opinion’s website in the hope that more carers get in touch and help us figure out what we need to do to improve information, services and support to carers and the people with dementia they care for. I am going to try and update you weekly with views from the carers and services I am involved in and hope you find this interesting, so until next week, bye for now.