Victim of Aged Care Neglect - Help Brenda Recover

Victim of Aged Care Neglect - Help Brenda Recover

I am sitting beside my mothers’ bedside in the Acute Ward of the Royal Melbourne Hospital. It’s been 24 days since I got the call telling me she’d been rushed to hospital from her aged care home; 24 days since I quickly packed a bag and travelled the 1400kms to get here; 24 days of sitting here 9am to 9pm advocating for her, fighting for her, caring for her, willing her to survive and to regain her health and mind.

I am Julie Hickson, Brendas' daughter and only surviving family. In the past few years, I have lost my sister to ovarian cancer and, a year later, my father died of motor neuron disease. I cared for them both.

On the 2nd of September 2022, my mother was rushed from her aged care home in Melbourne, Australia, to hospital, having been bedridden and delirious for days.

She was left alone in that state, her terrible condition ignored by staff, who later told me they had been “monitoring” her. When they finally called a doctor, my mother was critically ill and in full-blown delirium.

Extensive testing has exposed malnutrition as the only confirmed, contributing factor to the condition she is in.

Her metabolism was in meltdown and she had ketosis. These conditions induced delirium. Delirium is a terrible thing. It requires constant monitoring and care of the sufferer. It can take weeks to months to resolve. Sometimes it doesn’t. A person may return to how they were before the delirium, sometimes they don’t. Many people never return to their previous baseline and, for the elderly, an episode of delirium doubles their chance of dying in the following 12 months.

My mother, Brenda, is a victim of Australia’s atrocious aged care system and the abject failure of her residential care home to meet its duty of care to her.

The recent Royal Commission into the failures of aged care in Australia heard evidence that 50 – 60% of residents in aged care are suffering from malnutrition. This and many other failures, including chronic staff shortages, poorly trained staff and few onsite nurses are a national disgrace.

But they are not statistics. They are people. They are our loved ones, our parents, our elders. They are individuals who’ve contributed to our families, communities and societies for a lifetime. One day, they will be us.

When the day-to-day management of her life became more difficult, Brenda chose to move to an aged care home. She had the option of moving to my home in seaside NSW, but she wanted to continue to enjoy the lifestyle that urban Melbourne offered.

That was not to be. She moved in July 2020, just as the Covid pandemic hit. Aged care facilities, including hers, went into hard lockdown and she has lived in virtual solitary confinement for the past 2 years.

Under these conditions, aged care homes have been poorly monitored, regulated, and able to get away with murder.

In spite of my constant efforts to ensure she was properly cared for, being at a distance put me at a serious disadvantage. I could not drop by regularly, see for myself what was happening and take care of any problems quickly. I have had to rely on facility staff to help me and it has been a relentless, uphill battle from the start.

Brenda is a remarkable person who has lived an extraordinary life. She has always been someone who contributed and worked to make the world a better place for all. She raised two children under seven on her own whilst working to pay the bills and studying to finish her teaching degree. All at the same time!

She went on to become a first-class English and history teacher. She was proactive in tackling important social issues all her life. She was involved in politics, she wrote, she advocated, she organised. She cared about other people and worked to help the vulnerable, marginalised and oppressed.

In her old age she wasn’t asking too much of life; just to smell the roses, feed the birds, read, indulge in the arts and, occasionally, have a good feed at a good restaurant. What she got was abject neglect and starvation to the point of critical illness and physical and mental collapse.

Brenda survives on a small government pension, the bulk of which is paid directly to her aged care home. I am not employed at the moment. Although I am working towards funding an important project I’ve initiated, for now, I am surviving on unemployment relief.

This emergency has put us in an impossible position. The strain and stress are immense. There’s only me to take care of her and, after three weeks of twelve-hour days and a great deal of trauma, I am exhausted. There is so far still to go.

The costs imposed on us have been and will continue to be huge. There are the immediate costs of flights to reach her, $100 a day for accommodation and food (I’m in a bunk bed in a Youth Hostel room with seven other women). There’s taxi fares, medications, paying to do laundry. Her delirium has resulted in her not wanting to eat. Apparently, this is not unusual. I am constantly buying different foods in an effort to get her to eat again…..the list goes on.

There have been some very dark days where it looked like she might not make it. I am convinced that having me by her side has helped her survive and begin the slow process of recovery. There is no timeline yet for how much longer she will be in hospital.

When she is released, she cannot go back to the aged care home that did this to her. She must now come and live with me where I can ensure her proper care and long-term rehabilitation.

There will be packing and moving expenses and flights for her. I have to modify a room in my house as she has mobility issues now. I must find and pay for carer help. The list of expenses goes on and on.

I want to prioritise spending as much time with my mother as I possibly can. Ensuring she has the best possible care is of the utmost importance to me.

I want my focus to be on caring for her, not the added burden of worrying about how I am going to pay the bills and the huge expenses that come with illness. At a time like this, the worry about covering all the additional expenses is crushing.

There is nothing we can do to change what has happened to Brenda. What you can do is show your love and support by donating whatever you can to help her out and take the financial pressure off. Any amount you can donate will be so deeply appreciated. Please know that your contribution will mean the world to us.

Any amount raised above and beyond Brendas’ immediate expenses will be used to pay legal costs when we take on the aged care home that did this to her. We MUST ensure they are held accountable so this doesn’t happen again. This time it was my Mum, next time it might be yours.

Thank you for taking the time to look further into Brendas' story.