“I promised Dad he'd never go in a home” — Sarah’s story

When Sarah rang us on a Tuesday morning in October, the first thing she said was: “I feel like I'm betraying him.”

Her dad, Brian, was 84. A former engineer, fiercely independent, still living in the family home he'd bought in 1972. But over the past year, things had changed. He'd left the gas hob on twice. He'd been found by a neighbour at 6am, standing at the end of the road in his slippers, unsure how he'd got there. His dementia diagnosis had come eight months earlier, and Sarah, juggling a full-time job in Birmingham and two teenagers, was driving over every evening and lying awake most nights.

“Years ago, when Mum died, I told him I'd always look after him at home. So even picking up the phone to you felt like breaking a promise. I put it off for months.”

The breaking point

What finally forced the decision wasn't dramatic; it was a fall in the kitchen. Brian was shaken but unhurt. What followed was a conversation with his GP, who was blunt. He was no longer safe living alone, and carers popping in three times a day wasn't going to be enough for much longer.

“I sat in the car outside the surgery and cried. Then I did what everyone does — I googled ‘care homes near me’ and got completely overwhelmed. Dozens of names, glossy websites all saying the same things, prices that made my stomach drop. I had no idea what a good home even looked like, or how we'd pay for it, or how I'd ever persuade Dad to go.”

That evening, Sarah found our number and rang the next morning.

What happened next

Sarah was matched with one of our advisors, Kim, who spent the first phone call doing something Sarah didn't expect: mostly listening.

“It was the first time in months anyone had asked about him as a person, not a problem.”

“I'd braced myself for a sales pitch. Instead she asked about Dad. What he was like before the dementia. What he loved doing. What mattered to him.”

Two things came out of that conversation. First, Brian would need a home with specialist dementia care, not just a residential home with a memory unit bolted on. Second, he'd spent fifty years pottering in his garden, and a home without proper outdoor space would, in Sarah's words, “finish him off faster than the dementia.”

Kim also walked Sarah through the funding maze. Brian owned his house, which meant he'd be self-funding, but Kim explained exactly what that meant in practice, what he was still entitled to, and what questions to ask each home about fees so there'd be no surprises later. “That one conversation probably saved me weeks of confusion,” Sarah says.

Not every visit went well

Within a couple of days, Kim had shortlisted four homes within twenty minutes of Sarah's house and gone along to the viewings.

“The first visit was a disaster. On paper it looked perfect. In person it felt like a hotel lobby. Beautiful, but nobody was talking to anybody. Kim noticed it too. In the car afterwards she said, ‘Did you see the residents' faces?’ I hadn't, but she had. That's when I realised, I could have chosen wrongly having visited on my own.”

The third home was different. Smaller, a bit worn around the edges, and a resident was outside deadheading roses with a member of staff.

“Dad hadn't said a full sentence all morning. He walked over, picked up a pair of secateurs, and started helping. The staff member just carried on chatting to him like it was the most normal thing in the world. I knew then.”

The first few weeks

Sarah is honest about the move itself. It was hard. Brian was confused and tearful for the first week, and Sarah nearly brought him home twice. Kim had warned her this was normal and stayed in touch throughout.

“By week three, he'd adopted the garden. The staff let him ‘supervise’ the planting. When I visited, he introduced me to another resident as his colleague. He was more settled than he'd been in a year and I slept through the night for the first time in months.”

“I promised to look after him. Finding him the right home was looking after him. I just wish someone had told me that sooner.”

Six months on, Sarah says the promise she thought she'd broken looks different now.