Family Crisis Emergency Funds

Short version:

I need emergency funds for the next 6 months until I get deputyship of my mum's finances. I need to stop my mum's care worker from quitting and make sure I have enough money to pay her wages for the next 6 months. Plus pay my dad's funeral invoice. Plus pay for the food and other household goods for the next 6 months. I used up all my savings and overdraft trying to cover all the costs at my parents' house since my dad's stroke with no lasting power of attorney to access his funds, so now I'm in debt. Now he's died, my mum has inherited all his money, but she lost her mental capacity to consent to a lasting power of attorney a decade ago through Alzheimer's, so now I have to do a far more complicated deputyship application to access my parents' finances and need emergency funds to see us through till I get it.

Long version:

Background History:

22 months ago, my dad had a major stroke. Up until that day, he'd been my mum's full-time carer who has end-stage Alzheimer's. Even before her Alzheimer's diagnosis 13 years ago, he'd already been her full-time carer due to her psychotic disorders and other mental health conditions that arose after my sister died. My sister had mental and physical disabilities and died aged 11 when I was 13. Basically, my mum never recovered from losing her and was asked to take early retirement on medical grounds from her beloved job as a special care baby unit senior sister, which added to her poor mental health as she loved her life-long career in nursing. She'd been a nurse all her life at various hospitals back-to-back with no employment breaks - not even taking maternity - After recovering from 2 Caesarian sections from having me and my sister, both times she returned to full-time employment while my dad resigned from his to become the full-time stay-at-home child-rearer for 5 years until my sister and I were old enough for full-time school. My mum was dedicated to nursing. She'd been a geriatric nurse until that gave her a back injury and made her switch to paediatric nursing, midwifery, then specialist neonatal nursing from where she was asked to take early retirement. So that was a double-blow as she felt she'd lost two major loves in her life.

My dad returned to full-time work when my late sister and I were old enough for full-time school and equally loved his career in community advice work at various local authority councils. But after my mum's having to take early retirement, he tried his best for several years to make things work, juggling being the sole earner with trying to supervise my mum at home, but when I was 18 and went away to university, that was when he too had to join my mum in taking early retirement so he could be home to supervise her full-time. With each year that passed, my mum's mental health had been deteriorating and by that point, she needed his full-time supervision, even before her Alzheimer's diagnosis. The only community role my dad tried to hold onto was his decades-long role as a magistrate, and that was only because that was a once-weekly commitment, but even that he had to resign from too a few years ago when my mum's Alzheimer's progressed.

Recent History:

Fast forward to 22 months ago, my dad had been doing a sterling job of my mum's care. He'd done most of it alone as I'd been living away for 2 decades and only visited at weekends and holidays etc, and in terms of my involvement in my mum's care, my dad tried to keep me out of it as much as possible so I could get on with my career, my (then-)marriage (I'm divorced now), my social life, and running my own household, so that my mum's Alzheimer's didn't negatively impact on my life too. He was totally selfless and did everything in his power to keep me out of it and do the best for both me and my mum whilst putting his own life last. The only things he ever asked me to attend were the most important of the consultants' or doctors' or nurses' meetings where important decisions about my mum's treatments or meds or care plans would be made, which he left to me to oversee while he got on with the much tougher day-to-day real care work. Luckily I had supportive employers who let me take time off work to attend those meetings, so that was fine.

It wasn't until about 6 years ago when my dad turned 75 that he started to find my mum's care too much to do alone. He and my mum didn't qualify for local authority financial assistance for care because their savings exceeded the threshold, so he made lots of phone calls until he found a care worker lady to come each morning to help him do the harder parts of my mum's care that required 2 people, such as the bedbaths. She's not a qualified care worker from a care agency, as that would have cost him twice as much. She's just a lady who already knew care work from doing her mother-in-law's care on top of looking after her kids, who was happy to take on doing another lady's care for some extra cash. My dad had been withdrawing that cash every 2 weeks to pay her £300 every other Saturday.

The day my dad had the stroke 22 months ago, the care worker lady informed me that my dad appeared ill. I went to see and rung an ambulance and accompanied him in it to hospital. During the journey, the paramedics confirmed it was a stroke and my dad asked me to stay at my parents' house to take over his role as my mum's full-time carer, take over the shopping and the cooking and the blending and the re-ordering of meds and nappies and the runnings of the house, and gave me clear instructions to keep paying the care worker on time and make sure she didn't quit and to keep the household running smoothly till he returned. I don't have kids and had no skills in nappy changes or feeds etc and felt totally out of my depth, but I agreed.

A&E admitted him onto the acute stroke unit where I had to say goodbye at the ward doors because that hospital wasn't allowing visitors at the time due to covid. They said there'd only be telephone updates until they repatriate him to our local hospital for stroke rehab. So I went to my parents' house and took over my mum's care and the runnings of their house. (My house is on the other side of the city.)

After 3 days, the acute stroke unit transferred my dad to our local hospital's stroke rehab unit where I was finally allowed to visit, due to them having fewer restrictions. As soon as my dad saw me, he asked me to be his lasting power of attorney so that I'd have access to my parents' finances and wouldn't need to use my own funds on his and my mum's expenses. I agreed, but told him that he'd just had a major stroke, so we should wait and focus on his recovery first. Besides, at that time, the hospital was saying that typical stroke admissions are about 6-8 weeks, after which time they hoped to be discharging him back home, so I thought my savings would be enough to see us through that time and I could look into doing the lasting power of attorney after he came home.

But it didn't work out that way. As each day unfolded on the stroke rehab unit, more and more post-stroke complications materialised and this went on for weeks and weeks, then months and months. The stroke had done my dad lots of physical and mental damage. So in the end, it wasn't 6-8 weeks that they kept him in for - they kept him for over 5 months, during which time, not only had I exhausted my savings, but for the first time in my life, I'd also had to start using my overdraft.

Within the first week of my dad's stroke admission, the washer-dryer at my parents' house broke and I had to bag up the wet bed sheets in binliners with tight knots at the top each time I or my mum's care worker found my mum had had a nappy leak while I ordered a replacement washer-dryer and waited for it to be delivered. The second week, the blender for blending my mum's meals broke so I had to replace that too. Even when the doorbell broke, I needed to replace that immediately because we have a porch so there was no other way of me knowing when people were coming to the house. I was discovering that paying for all the shopping and household expenses was far more costly than I'd anticipated.

So were my mum's care worker's wages more expensive than anticipated because I'd had to ask my dad's permission to increase her shifts to twice a day so that not only was she coming in each morning as usual, but also coming back each afternoon too because I felt so out of my depth with my mum's care and didn't know what I was doing. She agreed to come back most afternoons for an additional £10 each time, but said she couldn't come back on Sundays or public holidays due to not driving and the buses being more irregular on those days. So her wages went up to £420 every 2 weeks and I did the afternoon care each Sunday and the evening and bedtime care every day.

Then when I had got to grips with my mum's care, I still needed her to keep coming back in the afternoons because by that time, my mum's district nurses found out that I was visiting my dad each day and asked me who I was leaving supervising my mum while I was out. My mum's district nurses used to come twice a day - each morning to do her insulin, and each afternoon to do her bed sores wound care - and had found me absent from the house and had threatened to report me to social services to put my mum into care if they found me leaving her unattended again. Plus by that time, my dad's hospital was calling me in for regular meetings or to attend various assessments, plus to attend some of his afternoon physio sessions to see if my presence would push him to overcome his post-stroke depression and make more progress, plus to go in and feed him each day due to them having no success in persuading him to eat/drink due to the post-stroke depression and post-stroke dysphagia. So it made sense to keep paying my mum's care worker the extra £10 per afternoon and try to make all appointments that I needed to attend at that time.

So it was a very expensive time and my Universal Credit wasn't enough to cover both the rent and bills at my house, plus my mum's care worker's wages and all the household expenses at my parents' house. Universal Credit is barely enough for 1 household, but I was stretching it across 2 households. So pretty soon, I'd also used up nearly all of my £2,000 overdraft.

I informed my bank of what was going on and they offered to freeze all overdraft charges until I got my dad's lasting power of attorney, but warned me not to reach the end of my overdraft limit because then their help would be no use as matters would fall out of the bank's hands.

After 5+ months in the stroke rehab unit, when the medics and therapists had finished dealing with the medical and therapy side of my dad's stroke rehab, they still weren't ready to discharge him home. Next they sent him on a 28-day Discharge-To-Assess placement at a nursing home where they handed him over to social services to take up the social care assessments side of things. There, they'd referred for a social worker to assess my dad's care needs, plus the CHC nurses to assess said care needs, then the occupational therapist was going to be assessing for essential-for-discharge mobility and other equipment and home adaptations for discharge home.

At the time, they were saying they were only funding his placement there for 28 days, during which time there'd be 1 social worker to oversee all those assessments, after which my dad would be discharged home. But again, this didn't turn out to be the case.

My dad was frequently very ill at the nursing home so in total, there were 4 social workers, all of whom ended up documenting their respective reasons for the delays in them completing their work and getting the council to approve more and more funding extensions so that in the end, instead of the placement lasting 28 days, it ended up lasting over 9 months.

During those 9+ months at the nursing home, the 1st social worker had agreed to help my dad and me do the lasting power of attorney, but was behind in completing her assessments of my dad and was struggling to fit them into the then-allocated 28-day placement. So it never got a look-in.

When she still hadn't managed to finish my dad's assessments after 3 months when her retirement day arrived, that was when a temporary agency social worker was brought in to replace her. But neither my dad nor I ever got to meet this 2nd social worker or know of her existence till 2 months later because she only lasted 2 weeks and never reached the point of contacting me to introduce herself or going to introduce herself to my dad. The first we knew of her was when a 3rd social worker contacted me to introduce herself as the 2nd social worker's replacement.

This 3rd social worker lasted longer than her predecessors and did manage to finish all the care needs assessments and send off her report to the CHC nurses for them take up and start their assessments. That 3rd social worker also took up where the 1st social worker had left off regarding the lasting power of attorney. She tested my dad's mental capacity to consent, and he passed. She also interviewed both him and me to check we understood what we were consenting to and weren't being forced into it etc, and was happy to help with the paperwork. She also said she wanted to apply for Attendance Allowance for my dad because the stroke had left him with physical and mental disabilities. But she too left the job before completing her work with my dad, so a 4th social worker was brought in to replace her.

The 4th social worker was keen to help do the lasting power of attorney as this was a particular area of expertise for her, but she said she'd have to start the process from scratch and re-test my dad's mental capacity and re-interview us. She'd met me during a CHC meeting at the nursing home and spoken to me on the phone many times, but she hadn't actually met or spoken to my dad yet. And like the previous social workers, this lasting power of attorney work would have to be fit in along with the rest of her work with my dad - the OT essential-for-discharge equipment and home adaptations assessments still hadn't started yet. So she continued with those referrals and the discharge planning work and arranged to visit me and my dad for a double-appointment to complete her discharge assessment and re-test my dad's mental capacity and re-interview him and me for the lasting power of attorney all in one visit after the discharge home, which she was overseeing.

Eventually, all the discharge work was completed and after over 14 months of being away, my dad was finally discharged home to my care. The reason why there were so many delays at the nursing home was because my dad frequently became very unwell there and on many occasions, became extremely unwell, which resulted in 9 separate emergency hospital admissions during his 9+ months there. So most of the time that he was there, he was either ill, or a lot of the time, he was absent. And while he was so ill, it was very likely that he'd have failed the lasting power of attorney mental capacity test anyway.

So while my dad was at the nursing home, I had to find another way of getting the funds I needed to carry on paying my mum's care worker and to carry on covering the household expenses at my parents' house. So when I saw that I was approaching the end of my overdraft and realised that there were delays at the nursing home and saw that the 28 days kept getting extended, I realised I had to start borrowing money. I contacted my bank again, this time requesting an overdraft increase. They said that because they'd had to record financial hardship on my file when they froze all overdraft charges, that that would ruin my chance of qualifying for an increase, and my applying and getting rejected would harm my pristine credit rating. But I asked to take my chances and apply anyway. But as they predicted, my application was rejected.

So next I had to ask my dad's nephew if I could borrow money from him. I knew he was the only relative in my dad's family who would have the money to help me. He agreed to lend me my mum's care worker's wages every 2 weeks until I got my dad's lasting power of attorney and could pay him back.

This took the biggest part of my financial pressure off, but not all of it. I still had to cover my parents' household expenses, and then I found out that my landlord had increased my rent to £250 above the local housing allowance's housing element so I'd have to make up that extra £250 out of my personal allowance that I was already stretching across 2 households. (Previously, I'd been having to make up an extra £150 rent out of my personal allowance that exceeded my housing element allowance.)

Plus there were additional incidental costs - every time the nursing home billed me for chargeable extras, I had to pay. Plus every time they rang me to tell me they'd rung an ambulance for my dad and to get there in time to accompany him to hospital, the ambulance would take us to various far away hospitals, depending on which one had the shortest waiting queue. It was never our local hospital because that no longer has an A&E. Going to these various hospitals usually didn't cost me anything because I was accompanying my dad in the ambulances, but getting back home from these far away places was a different matter, especially if the admissions process went late into the night or early hours of the morning when there were no more buses and my only way of getting back was to take expensive taxis. That happened on several occasions. Plus there were also some occasions where the nursing home rang me in the early hours of the morning when I was asleep and I got there too late and found the ambulance had been and gone before I could get there, so I had to follow in taxis. Plus there were a couple occasions where the ambulance arrived faster than expected and left before I had chance to go, so I had to take taxis directly to whichever hospital they went to. (I don't drive.)

So the 9+ months at the nursing home carried on being a costly time, despite my dad's nephew lending me my mum's care worker's wages. And nor could I stop paying her the extra £10 per afternoon because the nursing home had the same problems as the hospital in getting my dad to eat, so they too had similarly asked me to go in and feed him each day. Plus there were regular care plan review meetings and various assessments I had to attend there, so just like at the hospital, I had to make all those appointment times and visits at the nursing home in the afternoons while my mum's care worker was with my mum. (Plus any other appointments relating to me.)

But the strain on my finances continued after my dad was discharged home. He was discharged home with the biggest package of care that the council could refer for - 1 hour visits, 4 times a day, with 2 care workers each visit because he required 2 care workers to mobilise him and operate his mobility equipment. So unlike with my mum where we'd managed to avoid expensive care agencies, it wasn't possible to avoid expensive care agencies with my dad because I couldn't do his personal care or mobilise him by myself, and nor could my mum's care worker increase her shifts any more to take on my dad's care too. And nor would I have been able to find another private care worker like her willing to take on such a big amount of work. So the maximum I could contribute was me supervising my dad outside of the 4 care agency visits per day, making sure the shopping and cooking and meals prep was done on time for each visit, making sure I carried on feeding him declined said meals after each visit (as they couldn't persuade him to eat much, just like the nursing home and hospitals), making sure I got all the laundry washed and dried in time after each visit, making sure I bought and replaced all the toiletries and other items on time that they needed for my dad's personal care, plus making sure I ordered all his meds and other as-required pharmaceutical paraphernalia that his district nurses needed each week. Plus responding to his telecare alarms linked to my pager when I wasn't downstairs to supervise him in person. It was hard work. Far harder than my mum's care. But worth every minute to finally get my dad back home and reunited with my mum after 14+ months of being away. But despite my contributions to my dad's care, we had to accept the expensive care agencies for all the rest of the parts I couldn't do.

Because social services were just as aware as I was about the delays in my dad's lasting power of attorney because their social workers had been documenting the delays on their files, that meant that they'd been able to put a freeze on the care agency invoices, not requiring us to pay them till I got the lasting power of attorney. So at least payment of what would have been the biggest expense was being postponed till I had access to my parents' finances.

But the rest of the expenses that I'd been covering continued, plus to make matters worse, my dad's nephew who'd been lending me the money for my mum's care worker's wages since my overdraft ran out then informed me that he could no longer afford to send the full wages, and could only afford to send half from now on - so £210 every 2 weeks rather than the full £420. I explained this to my mum's care worker and asked if she'd agree to accept half-wages moving forwards until I got my dad's lasting power of attorney, at which time I'd backpay all the missing halves. She reluctantly agreed. So now when I got the lasting power of attorney, not only would I be having to return all the full-wages that my dad's nephew had been sending, plus now half-wages moving forwards, but also my mum's care worker's missing half-pay moving forwards. Neither of them were happy about the delay, so that visit to re-test my dad's mental capacity and re-interview him and myself for the lasting power of attorney that the 4th social worker had arranged to do after my dad was discharged home was very much needed.

But nor did that take place as promptly as we'd arranged. Despite how long it took to finally get my dad back home after 14+ months, I only managed to hold onto him for 4 days before he fell critically ill again and his care agency rung an ambulance. Luckily we'd managed to reunite him and my mum in time for their Golden Wedding Anniversary the next day, but 2 days later, I was accompanying him in another ambulance on emergency hospital admission number 10 since the stroke. (11 if we include the stroke admission.) This one lasted a month, but I managed to get him discharged back home the day before this Christmas Eve.

Next was Christmas and new year, and after multiple rescheduled appointment dates, in the end, the earliest that the 4th social worker could reschedule the home visit was late January. So she finally met my dad for the first time, re-tested his mental capacity (luckily he'd had enough time to recover since being critically ill in hospital and he passed, just like he'd passed the previous social worker's mental capacity test), re-interviewed me and my dad, confirmed she was happy to proceed, plus did the discharge review work she needed to do with my dad.

Within a few weeks, I and most of the other participants had done most of the work for both lasting power of attorney applications (my dad had actually asked me to be his lasting power of attorney for health and welfare as well as property and finance), but during that time, my dad had started to become unwell again, until his care agency rung another ambulance. I accompanied him to hospital and this time they kept him in for nearly 4 months. I only got him back home a few weeks ago, but he was extremely unwell when he came home.

Because he'd been in hospital so long, unfortunately the 4th social worker couldn't keep his case on because by that time, she'd taken on new cases. We also lost the old care agency for the same reason - despite them being the ones who rung the ambulance to send him to hospital, they too had taken on new clients and could no longer take my dad back. So I had to start from scratch with a brand new agency, plus now a 5th social worker.

The 5th social worker had wanted to come to re-test my dad's mental capacity, but I could see how ill my dad was since coming out of hospital and I doubted he'd pass this time while still in that condition. So I really didn't want it at that time and we postponed.

While my dad had been away in hospital this most recent time, I was aware that we were approaching my mum's 80th birthday. I'd not been able to do anything for my dad's 80th because it fell in the middle of his 5+ month stroke hospital admission. So the most I could do was visit him with food from home like I had all the rest of the days he was there, only this time, slightly fancier food. He also spent his next birthday in hospital because that fell during the 1 month admission 4 days after his discharge home from the nursing home, and that birthday I wasn't even allowed on the ward to see or feed him due to a flu outbreak on the ward, so I had to leave food and cake with staff at the ward doors. So with my mum's 80th approaching, this was my opportunity to do a joint 80th for both of them - a small gathering at the house in between my dad's care agency visits - and luckily my dad was discharged home the week before it, so I could go ahead.

But when I saw how ill my dad was when he came home, I did consider cancelling my plans. Especially because things were so chaotic again with having to start all over again with a new care agency. But at the same time, I wanted to go ahead because my mum's doctors had already told me and my dad that she was at the very end stage of the Alzheimer's 5 years ago and only had 3 months to live and wouldn't make her 75th birthday, so I decided we must celebrate this not-so-small miracle of her reaching her 80th because that was the one thing that was going right amid everything else going wrong. So I kept my plans.

I'm hoping my mum was aware of everyone's voices and presence at the party, but my dad was pretty ill through it. And carried on getting iller each day. Till the following week, this time it was I who rung him an ambulance. I went with him to the hospital, but this time he didn't make it out. He died there 2 and a half weeks ago with me by his side.

Current Emergency:

My mum inherited all my dad's money that day. Because my mum lost her mental capacity to consent to a lasting power of attorney about a decade ago, now I have to do something else called a deputyship for her in order to access my parents' funds, which is far more complicated (and expensive) than a lasting power of attorney and can take up to 6 months to process. Nor do I have the mental focus right now to even begin that whole new complicated process. Nor to locate all the documents I'd need to do it - As mentioned, things were pretty chaotic in this house for many years while my dad was doing my mum's care alone. It was a 24-hour job, so things like tidying and cleaning and filing away paperwork and keeping the house in order never got a look-in. And since I took over running this house, I can fully sympathise, because it's been the same for me. So I wouldn't even know where to begin.

I've done my dad's funeral, but now I've got the funeral bill to pay. I tried asking for a 6 month deferral of the invoice till I get my mum's deputyship, but the maximum they could agree to was 1 month due to them having to pay the council upfront for the cemetery plot.

Plus my dad's nephew said he could no longer afford to send the half-wages for my mum's care worker because he's now in the same position as me - he too used up all his money and is now also in his overdraft. He'd been waiting for me to get my dad's lasting power of attorney for me to be able to return his money for the wages and half-wages he'd been sending all this time, and now I've had to explain that there's now going to be an even longer delay of up to 6 months in my being able to return it till I now get this deputyship. But he can't wait any longer.

I've also had to explain this to my mum's care worker - that now there's going to be an additional 6 month delay in me backpaying all the missing half-pays for all these months since my dad's nephew no longer had enough money for the full wages. She was very upset. Then when I had to explain that nor does my dad's nephew have any more money to even pay those half-wages anymore, now she's saying she'll have to quit the job because she can't work with no pay at all.

Plus because I was already dangerously near the end of my overdraft, I had to ring my bank again to update them on the new depths that my financial crisis has sunken to and ask them for a loan. But just like last time when they advised me I wouldn't qualify for an overdraft increase and they were right, this time they're also saying that nor do I qualify for a loan. Plus they updated me that when they'd agreed to freeze all overdraft charges indefinitely until I got my dad's lasting power of attorney, that that was based on last year's banking terms. But since then, they've amended their terms this year and the new rules state that freezes on overdraft charges can only last 60 days, after which I'm going to start accruing interest charges on my debt.

I'd like to say my situation couldn't get any worse, but the way this story reads, that's clearly not realistic because it constantly does. Even the foodbank referral for food parcels and feminine hygiene parcels that I asked my dad's 5th social worker for 2 weeks ago still hasn't turned up. I've never used a foodbank before, but I'd have hoped that with something as urgent as this with no food in the house and fast running out of all other household items, he should have completed his referral by now and something should have come through by now.

So I bit the bullet and had to start making phone calls to relatives and friends I thought had enough income to help me. Up until now, my dad's nephew had been the only person I'd told about my financial problems. But now I've had to tell my problems to a handful of other people.

As a result, my mum's niece used her savings to send me my mum's care worker's last wages, but still only the half-wages that my dad's nephew had been sending previously, so I'll still have to backpay her the remaining half. That money arrived the day before her due payday so I was able to withdraw the cash in time to pay her on time, but she's still not happy that it's still only half and that there's now going to be a 6 month delay in her getting her remaining half-pays backpaid. Nor do I know if my mum's niece will be able to carry on doing this for long.

That's all I had in terms of relatives I thought had decent enough incomes to help, so next I started ringing friends I thought had decent enough incomes to help. Two did and sent some money, but not enough for my mum's care worker's next wages, and certainly not enough for the funeral invoice. But one of them did set up a standing order to me for £100 a month for the next 6 months till I get the deputyship, which will certainly help with food and other household expenses. Meanwhile, today, another friend sent all her remaining balance on her supermarket voucher card, which I can use in the meantime.

All this is beyond generous and I'm unbelievably grateful. But where am I going to find all the rest of the money I need for the funeral and my mum's care worker's wages and the household expenses I still need to pay for for the next 6 months till I get access to my parents' finances? Plus how will I repay my bank debt now that the charges freeze will be coming to an end? That's where another friend suggested I do a crowdfunder, given that this is pretty much already what this emergency has now turned into.

I've never done one before, but I'm fairly sure you're not supposed to write this much for the story. But I just decided that if I really must put my story out there, then I might as well just say everything and get it all out there. Maybe writing this all out will help me process all this, if nothing else. Or help someone feel less alone if they're going through a similar crisis.

But if you can help, I'd be very grateful. I've tried to put an accurate figure for the total amount needed, but if I manage to find the time and energy to go through all the furniture and junk at my parents' house and get rid of enough to make enough space to move in all my furniture and stuff I've accumulated over the 2 decades I was living away that's in my house, then I might update the figure to factor in the money I'd need for skip hire and a furniture removals company. But again, I'm really in no position to organise a house-move right now, so I'm not factoring that in now.

But my mum's care worker has been telling me for weeks that the fridge-freezer is broken. She's right, but because I knew I didn't have the money to buy a new one, I've just been trying to ignore that problem by not using it and hoping I can get it repaired later without having to buy a new one. That's fine now there's no food, but once I fix the food problem, next I'll be needing to fix the fridge problem and if it turns out it can't be repaired, I might have to update the figure to factor in a replacement fridge-freezer.

A couple of my dad's friends have remarked that I need to order him a headstone. I haven't made a decision on this yet, but I'm thinking this can wait too.

One very expensive aspect I should add is that before I took over the runnings of my parents' house, my dad had been paying for return journey taxis for my mum's care worker each public holiday when the buses weren't running. So when I took over the runnings of this house, she wanted me to carry on doing that each public holiday because she doesn't drive and has no other way of getting here when there are no buses. This has been very expensive so far and even more so on double-fare holidays. Plus there have been additional days such as local bus strike days and marathon days and parade days that have obstructed her bus routes where my only way of getting her here was by my booking more return journey taxis. This has amounted to a small fortune I've had to pay so I'll have to factor that into the next 6 months' money I'll need too.

Please note: Even if you can only donate a small amount, that'd still help. Example: The baby wipes I buy for my mum are 65p per pack. My mum's care worker and I get through 2-5 wipes per nappy change, so I usually buy a couple packs per week. We've totally run out and are using wet kitchen roll (which is also running out). So just donating £1.30 as and when you can would help me buy 1 week's baby wipes each time.

Thanks for reading and for whatever help you can contribute - be it donating or volunteering your time to share this crowdfunder link on your social media.

Written on 1st August 2023