Death in Care

I visit an elderly parishioner who lives in a care home on the Oxford Road, three miles west of Reading town centre. Tony used to be a vicar at St Giles, about half a mile south of the town centre. St Giles is famous locally for its ultra-High Anglican style of worship. Arguably Holy Trinity on Oxford Road, Brian Brindley's old parish, was even higher in its heyday in the 1980s. Brian staged liturgies fit for a Papal coronation, with enough bells, smells and lavish vestments to give any Evangelical instant heart failure. But St Giles comes a very honourable second, with faithful celebrations of any number of Saints' feastdays.

After his retirement, Tony lost no time in converting to Rome. But in his bedroom there are still mementos of his Anglican glory days, notably a framed photograph of him with the Archbishop of Canterbury, circa 1962 I guess. Archbishop Michael Ramsey was world-famous as "leader" of the world-wide Anglican community of the time and there is Tony, prominent among his clerical entourage. It is a poignant reminder of the time when, as another convert ex-Anglican clergyman said to me, he had an "absolutely brilliant mind", before a series of large and small strokes and advanced age reduced him to a stage of child-like helplessness.

He was briefly in a much less attractive care home on the Bath Road before his move to Riverview. It is thus named because, when the trees have shed their leaves, you can just about see the River Thames on the far side of the Oxford Road and the London-South Wales main railway line. In some ways this is a plus point for a care home. Those residents with some remaining mental faculties have visual stimulation from the incessant traffic and the frequent trains linking London to Cornwall, South Wales and Birmingham. The interior is well furnished and maintained - not that you would expect anything less, with fees up to 800 pounds ($1,200) per week......

The staff are like the United Nations, with white Britons being a tiny minority - i.e. one care assistant and one receptionist, from my numerous visits to date. Not that it diminishes the care in most ways. The residents look clean and relatively well groomed and dressed and there is none of the pervasive urine odour that you find in other care homes. This is no small matter, given their extreme helplessness and considerable mental confusion. It is an inevitably depressing sight in the dayroom, with formerly active citizens sitting in an apathetic circle of silence or intermittent verbal outbursts.

The staff are always welcoming, with Krys, one of the numerous East Europeans, knowing how to serve my tea just as I like it (milk, no sugar). But you can't help suspecting the chance of communication problems, between the constant changes of 24 hour care staff on shifts and the numbers whose first language is not English.

I was thus greatly surprised to see reports in our local papers about the death of a 97 year old resident at Riverview. She had reportedly died from hypothermia after admission to the Royal Berkshire Hospital. I always found the home well heated - too much so on some days, when I felt compelled to open Tony's window for a breath of fresh air. But frail elderly people need that extra warmth. So how did this very vulnerable lady get hypothermia? We await the formal inquest and coroner's report. But the PR bullshitters, as ever, were very much on the ball. A few days after the news of her death broke, I visited Tony and the receptionist handed me a circular letter in an envelope as I signed in at her desk. It reassured visitors about the misleading media reports - though it did not say how or why they were misleading - explained that the home was working with Reading Social Services to bring the matter "to a close".


Ho hum....call me a rancid old cynic, but I shall be scrutinising media reports and any coroner's verdict very closely for the next few months........