"Would be fantastic to have them working together"

Both my parents are in their 70's and live at home.  My dad has very severe dementia.  Overall, I feel that the service and care we give to my dad and people like him is lacking and very poor.  The individuals carers who see my dad do so much for him but I feel we are failing them too.  Due to lack of funding and council cutbacks we provide a safe home, a safe environment but not much else to enhance or stimulate their lives.  You then have the added nuisance of dealing with lots of different people in different departments where you have to repeat your case over and over often receiving random or inappropriate and often upsetting letters.  It would be fantastic if we could have them work together so that everyone knew what was happening, had been arranged, the care plan involved - share resources even.  I do feel that if it wasn't for friends and family helping out my parents wouldn't stand a chance.  There are not many options available for the elderly which is very sad.

My dad has to have constant care, his dementia is so bad now that he requires 2 carers to come in three times each day to help with his personal care.  A friend comes in for a couple of hours each day to allow my mum time to go do the shopping and get out of the house but it's been like this for 5 years.  He does go to day care for a couple of hours twice each week but we have to pay for someone to go with him to enable his one to one interaction that he needs while there, it's the only respite he has.  He would like to go more but the spaces are limited and I believe they may be reducing those numbers too.  It's so sad.  

A small glimmer of hope we have is a trial that is currently running.  A member of staff originally from the Mental Health Team (think it may be called something different now) visits us with the worker from Social Services, they work together which makes it easier for the overall picture.  This is working well, but it is a trial and it would be terrible if it stopped.