CCChat-Magazine_3
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"MY MUM IS IN DANGER<br />
BUT NO ONE CAN SEE"<br />
Rachel's story<br />
“I am told that dementia is a complex illness. It<br />
isnt. Coercive control is complex behaviour”<br />
Rachel has been trying to get help for<br />
her mother for many years.<br />
She believes her mother is being failed and<br />
there is nothing she can do to make those<br />
who are in a position to help her, see.<br />
She has tried and tried and tried but, instead,<br />
she has come away with the awareness that<br />
SHE is being seen as the problem.<br />
Not the abuser, the emotionally bereft<br />
emotional abuser who has isolated Rachel's<br />
mum, but, instead, the daughter who<br />
desperately wants her mother to be safe.<br />
I have talked to Rachel on numerous<br />
occasions. We have been in contact nearly 2<br />
years. Throughout that time she has told me<br />
what has happened, filling me in on the<br />
background, updating me on the present.<br />
I have literally wanted to bang my head in<br />
frustration at the blind ignorance, the<br />
failings to recognise areas that should flag up<br />
a serious safeguarding concern.<br />
For some reason ,those concerns remain<br />
unflagged. Or, to be more accurate, the case<br />
has been looked into but nothing has ever<br />
been found.<br />
He appears devoted to his wife, so devoted he<br />
spends all his time with her. He claims it is to<br />
reassure her. He claims she only wants him to<br />
look after her.<br />
Rachel's mum has dementia and no capacity. She<br />
tells me of some horrifying examples of lack of<br />
understanding, negligent care and poor practice.<br />
There was the time social care refused to see she<br />
was at risk. She looked well presented so they<br />
surmised she was well cared for- because she was<br />
wearing clean clothes and he had brushed her hai,<br />
she was safe..<br />
There was the time the perpetrator managed to<br />
get a copy of highly confidential meeting notes<br />
discussing the potential risk he posed to Rachel's<br />
mother.<br />
There was the time he admitted giving her his<br />
medication. Highly addictive sleeping pills. He<br />
said he had been told he could do that, if Rachel's<br />
mum became unmanageable and he couldn't cope.<br />
That it did not alert them to possible risk,<br />
especially when he refused social care, saying he<br />
wanted to do it all himself. Even though he<br />
admitted medicating her when he plainly couldn't.<br />
There was the time he insisted on no outside help,<br />
saying he could manage, saying he wanted to be<br />
the one looking after his wife. He was in in<br />
eighties.<br />
<strong>CCChat</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong> - Making the Invisible Visible