CCChat-Magazine_3

"MY MUM IS IN DANGER
BUT NO ONE CAN SEE"
Rachel's story
“I am told that dementia is a complex illness. It
isnt. Coercive control is complex behaviour”
Rachel has been trying to get help for
her mother for many years.
She believes her mother is being failed and
there is nothing she can do to make those
who are in a position to help her, see.
She has tried and tried and tried but, instead,
she has come away with the awareness that
SHE is being seen as the problem.
Not the abuser, the emotionally bereft
emotional abuser who has isolated Rachel's
mum, but, instead, the daughter who
desperately wants her mother to be safe.
I have talked to Rachel on numerous
occasions. We have been in contact nearly 2
years. Throughout that time she has told me
what has happened, filling me in on the
background, updating me on the present.
I have literally wanted to bang my head in
frustration at the blind ignorance, the
failings to recognise areas that should flag up
a serious safeguarding concern.
For some reason ,those concerns remain
unflagged. Or, to be more accurate, the case
has been looked into but nothing has ever
been found.
He appears devoted to his wife, so devoted he
spends all his time with her. He claims it is to
reassure her. He claims she only wants him to
look after her.
Rachel's mum has dementia and no capacity. She
tells me of some horrifying examples of lack of
understanding, negligent care and poor practice.
There was the time social care refused to see she
was at risk. She looked well presented so they
surmised she was well cared for- because she was
wearing clean clothes and he had brushed her hai,
she was safe..
There was the time the perpetrator managed to
get a copy of highly confidential meeting notes
discussing the potential risk he posed to Rachel's
mother.
There was the time he admitted giving her his
medication. Highly addictive sleeping pills. He
said he had been told he could do that, if Rachel's
mum became unmanageable and he couldn't cope.
That it did not alert them to possible risk,
especially when he refused social care, saying he
wanted to do it all himself. Even though he
admitted medicating her when he plainly couldn't.
There was the time he insisted on no outside help,
saying he could manage, saying he wanted to be
the one looking after his wife. He was in in
eighties.
CCChat Magazine - Making the Invisible Visible