The promise.
Most families promised they would never put their loved one in a home. This page is about that promise, and how it gets kept.
Nearly every family says it.
In twelve years, the most common thing a family has said to us in the first week is some version of “I feel I’ve let them down.” Sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. It is said in the car park, on the phone, and in the lounge with a cup of tea going cold.
It’s ok. It comes from caring, not from failing. The people who feel it most are the ones who did the most.
It has more than one name.
Families call it letting them down. Giving up. Handing them over. Losing hold of something they had kept together for years. Being the one who decided. Some call it failing, at a job nobody trained them for and nobody else could see.
Underneath the names is the same pull in two directions: the promise on one side, the nights on the other, and no way left to keep both. It is not a fault in you. It is what love feels like when the caring has outgrown one pair of hands.
A promise made in a different year.
The promise was made when caring was a lift to the shops and a phone call on a Sunday. Nobody promised to be awake at three in the morning, or to do the lifting, or to make every meal and every decision for two people. The person who made the promise did not know what it would come to mean.
Underneath it sits a belief: that it should be you, that anyone else is second best, and that other people will say so. Families carry that belief a long way past the point where it is true. Dementia care is a job for a team, on a rota, with someone awake all night. One person at home is doing that job alone.
You have not put them in a home. You have found them one.
Choosing a home is not the end of caring for someone. It is the moment the caring gets a team. From here the nights, the medication, the getting ready and the lifting are done by people who do this every day, who know their name by the second morning and their breakfast by the third.
What comes back is the part only you can do. Sitting with them. The same old stories. Being a daughter, a son, a husband, a wife again, instead of a carer. Families tell us this is the part they could not see from the other side of the decision.
In their words.
When mum went to live at Aria I was so worried that they wouldnt care for her the way I had but they did that and so much more! She became part of Aria's family and Aria became a part of ours. If your lookin for somewhere for your loved one you wont find better than Aria.
Mum was reluctant to enter a care environment so admission was supported by social services. Aria care home was most supportive in these circumstances providing me with lots of information and support. Mum is now very happy and settled in the home and wants for nothing. She refers to it as a hotel as her room is lovely, staff brilliant and very friendly and the food is marvelous
Nothing has to be decided today.
Come for an afternoon. Meet the team, see an ordinary day, bring them if that helps. Ask anything, including this. Nothing has to be decided while you are here, and there is more time than it feels like.
If the practical side is the next worry, Your Rights and Funding take it in order.
Come for an afternoon