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## 06 Life in a Retirement Home

I have been in a home for the elderly, what we now call EHPAD in France, for a number of years. Unfortunately, I can't go back to the place where we used to go several times a month. It's sad... But we had good times and met some wonderful people who look after our elderly people every day. And we have formed bonds of friendship and trust with some of them. It's not so good because I've seen old people's homes where our elderly are like objects or sources of profit. In France there was a scandal 5 years ago with some companies. And I still have a member of my family, far away from me, in a retirement home. I will not recommend it...

Sometimes you have no choice. That was the case with my mother-in-law. It was during the SARS-CoV2 crisis and we started to search around our house. It was terrible because there were no places or information about the covid disease in the facility. After that, we started to look around her home and around her other children, even though they did nothing to help her. And we found an old people's home run by an association linked to pension funds. We were able to visit and see her room beforehand, talk to nurses and doctors and even the psychologist. It seemed better than anything I had seen before. But you never know.

Fortunately, it was true, and she has lived there for several years, despite her severe disability. But it's not like a hotel or a hospital. There are not many care assistants and only one or two nurses (it was quite a small old people's home with less than 100 residents). At least half of the residents need help with washing, eating and moving from chair to bed. And 90% of the care assistants are women. Most of them are experienced, but it's very difficult to keep young people in a job that is poorly paid and, above all, physically demanding. There are many job advertisements in old people's homes, but even after the SARS-Cov2 crisis, they are not paid more in France. Not enough time to do the job and talk to the residents in need, sometimes not enough good equipment. For example, the decubitus machine would not charge the battery and had to be plugged in. But sometimes in other EHPADs or even hospitals, they forget to plug it in and leave it in the room.

If we had a good relationship with everyone, from the director to the care assistant and the nurses, it's not always like that. It was easy to contact the doctor. Sometimes there isn't a doctor every day. The scandal in France was about an expensive private nursing home where the residents had no nappies changed several times a day... and sometimes for several days. Meals are not very rich or appetising, but this can change depending on the subcontractors and the skills of the cooks. And all of this is very expensive, often costing more than 2500 euros/month. So you can understand why many elderly people have to rely on social assistance and other financial help. France is not the worst country for this, but the way we take care of our parents says a lot about our society.

We have been very happy for four years and very happy to see some of the care assistants at the funerals. A sad moment, but with good memories and a kind of friendship. It's not often like that, unfortunately. In many homes, a resident is just a number on a spreadsheet. But it's not much fun for a resident to stay there. Your body is like a prison when you can't move and you can't do many things freely, because if you're there it's for a reason. For many of the residents' children, it's also a way of getting rid of a nuisance! Many people have not been visited by their children or grandchildren for months or years. They had nothing to live on from their guardianship: no clothes, no beauty products, ... Several times a week, there's animation or workshops, but it's done by a volunteer carer, for a few extra euros. It's very difficult to find people to do this... and to pay them. For us, going to a nursing home was our relative's choice, not ours. But staying at home with a wheelchair was impossible or too dan
gerous. When I saw some people who could walk and talk relatively normally, I wondered why they went there. Sometimes we met their children at the beginning, rarely after a month, even around Christmas or New Year.

I hope to never go there even if there are great people to take care of our elderly.

2Dɛ