Fair Field County Business Daily

Do social services have the rights to put an elderly person in a home without that persons permission?

My elderly grandma as been in hospital 2 weeks & the doctor agreed to let her home. However the family as been arguing over aftercare arrangements & 1 family involved social services. Social services will be placing my grandma in a residential home but she doesnt want to! Are they aloud to do this? What action can we take to stop this?

Public Comments

1. Is her family against it? If she gave medical Power of Attorney to someone else, she can be put in a home on their say so, against her will. Maybe supervised living is the best thing for her.
2. This happened to my nan recently. Social services can put your nan in a home even if she doesnt want to go if they feel she cannot look after herself. There is a special term for this but i cannot think what it is :( Its like being sectioned under the mental health act I suppose if you can prove that you can give her the 24hr care she needs then you may be able to look after her
3. Not only can they but they often do. It is very rare that a person goes into a home willingly.
4. Even if your grandma gave the family member who wants to put her into a home a medical power of attorney, she can revoke that if she is of sound mind. There is a concern about who will provide adequate care for your grandmother when she comes home from the hospital. Depending on her conditions, provisions can be made for home care. Contact your local senior services office to ask what sort of support they can offer. Does someone need to be with your grandmother all the time? If so, can the ones who want to help her stay at home take turns? Social service people in the hospital seem to want to push the elderly into nursing homes right away. It makes you wonder whether the nursing homes are giving them commissions. When the family is devastated dealing with the illness, they start asking how much money that person has. Hospitals also do not like to keep sick people until they recover. Social service's role in a hospital is to get people discharged quickly, increasing the profit the hospital keeps for that stay under Medicare. If she had received a discharge notice, you can appeal it, and in any case it will give you a few more days to decide what to do.
5. If she is likely to be a danger to herself or others then yes they can. Why can the family not take her in and look after her - or is that "to difficult"?