What Makes a Great Care Home Visit

The words ‘great’ and ‘care home visit’ do not seem to naturally belong together, to be fair. Usually we have good visits and not so good visits, but today’s visit was great. I always put a post about my visits to my mum on the This Present Moment FB page, but today’s was blog post-worthy, to me.

So, what makes a great visit? Well, I’ve talked before about setting your expectations low, so I will go and visit my mum with the expectation that she may just be asleep the whole time. A good visit will start as we walk down the corridoor, because we’ll hear her ‘talk-singing’ before we get to her room. Today, I could hear her almost as soon as we got out of the lift, so big tick for ‘not asleep’.

It can take quite a lot of effort to get my mum’s attention, but today, she looked up as we walked into the room. As I walked towards her chair, she started with a small smile- almost a polite smile - but then, as I got closer, she broke into the broadest grin and…she spoke! Actual, recognisable words! She said “I have a wonderful…” and then the last word tailed off into something unintelligible. No worries! I infilled it with ‘daughter’. Because…you may as well go with something, right?

4 actual words in a sentence is quite something anyway. One minute in, and we’re having a good visit.

Then, there was a lot of smiling today. She was talk-singing and smiling, and holding her monkey toy.

I can spend a lot of a visit, holding my phone, waiting for a smile to appear and being poised to capture it - today, I got six smiling photos! (The one above is not the best one, that’s just for us).

Sometimes, we are working hard to engage my mum, and then we’ll bring out
- past greeting cards
- photos
- her book
These are the tricks we employ, to try and get her attention. Nothing else was needed today, as she ‘chatted’ away to us.

She was brought a cup of tea (and, we were offered a drink too, which is quite rare! I always take a can of diet coke with me, and eke it out across the time we’re with her). She took good, healthy gulps of tea, and even held the cup for herself, some of the time. We also had a quick chat with her lovely carer, which led to a quick chat with the nurse, which led to bringing something up that can be addressed with her gp, who was due in later. It was one of those visits where everything fell into place, easily.

My mum stayed alert, and seemed present with us, the whole visit. She’ll look at things with such an intense gaze that you can’t help but wonder what she’s thinking, or even seeing, Today, she was staring at my shoes. (In my mind, disapprovingly, as they are not her kind of thing at all).

The time goes really quickly when you’re not desperately casting round for something to hold her attention and what I missed, as I walked away to put my empty can in the bin, was my mum beckoning me back. My stepdad told me she was bending her finger, in a ‘come here’ gesture.

As we left, she was still looking at us…usually, as soon as we’re out of her line of sight, it’s like we’re already forgotten. (In some ways, that’s no bad thing, because leaving is hard every time). Today, she smiled and watched as we left, and only turned away back to monkey as we walked out of the room.

And all of that is what makes a great care home visit.

Much love,
Anna
xx