The extra mile

I was visiting clients in hospital recently (a husband and wife who had both fallen at home) when a doctor on the ward commented that he had never seen a solicitor who dealt with "this kind of thing" before. As I was there with a care assessor, had brought in clothes for the couple and was updating them on the welfare of their pets, I'm guessing that he was referring to the more hands-on approach that I take with my clients.

Helping people manage their affairs means so much more than just keeping their bank statements in a neat order and topping up pocket money accounts. I have, however, found myself having to sort out a whole lot of practical things again, now that I have tested my organisational skills and use of google.

Living in care

We're all able to contact agencies and arrange for a suitable carer to be found. In this case, it was making arrangements for the carer to be able to live in the house that required a lot of effort. Clearing the room, having the carpet cleaned, buying and assembling a bed, emptying the wardrobes and organising new bedding. These are all things that, I expect, family members normally sort out, but there are no family members in this case, and no one involved in my clients' care at the hospital seemed at all interested in the environment they were being discharged to.

I discovered that it is very easy to buy beds and bedding for next day delivery, which when operating under the threat of hospital discharge at any moment, is very helpful. There are also more carpet cleaning companies in the Warwickshire area than I thought possible.

Sourcing these items, making sure the companies are reputable and, of course, getting quotes is all very time consuming. There are, unfortunately, always going to be jobs where we know from the start that we’re not going to make back all of our time at our full hourly rate. It is possible to maximise our return by making sure that there is a good team around us, with different skills and different levels of experience, so that we can put the most cost-effective person in charge of the right task. So a well-balanced ‘in-house’ team is essential. Having a number of reliable, local tradespeople is also valuable; if you are able to put a call in to a ‘man with a van’ and know you can trust him with house keys and contents, then that’s a lifesaver.

Making the house 'safe'

I asked at the hospital about getting an occupational therapist (OT) to come and see my clients' property. They have each fallen a number of times, so there are clearly things that could be done to make the house safer for them. I was told that as the clients are both mobile (that is, as they can both just about stagger a few paces with the aid of a walking frame) then any OT visit would need to be arranged privately, and any equipment purchased privately. The same proviso applied to my query about hospital beds - my clients can purchase them privately. There is a part of me that wonders about the sense in waiting for people to be so ill that they have lost any ability to live independently before helping them. A relatively small outlay from the NHS may stop my clients ending up in hospital again, and I am sure it costs much more to nurse two people on a ward than it does to provide some equipment for them to use at home.

More online shopping therefore ensued, and I found a number of really good sites that sell aids for people with limited mobility and continence issues.
I am hopeful that specialist non-slip rugs by my clients' bed will stop them losing their footing there, and that a removable ramp and some grab rails will help them negotiate a tricky step. I've also moved some trip hazard objets d'art from the landing upstairs. I am aware that I am not a qualified health professional though, and I will certainly try to persuade my clients to pay for a proper safety assessment to be carried out.

The whole process of bringing my clients home to a safer environment and with a carer in place took four solid days of work. The Alzheimer's Society have shown how much dementia costs the UK, but it seems to me that support isn't there generally for people who are old and frail. So I don't think that being more 'hands on' is an aspect of my work that I'm going to change.

Sofia Tayton is a partner and head of care and capacity at Lodders Solicitors

She writes the regular in-practice article on care and capacity for Private Client Adviser