Walking

I admit – I spent this afternoon without an elder. Mark (a young 54) and I decided to go for a walk near a reservoir and this involved hiking boots on terrain unsuitable for Dad’s trusted walking frame – so he was left behind.

Dad has always been a very determined walker and walking has been an important part of his life. From the Black Forest in Germany (see photo above) in 1936 during the build up to the Second World War – to the artificial lake-side walk in the new city near his last residence, he has stridden out speedily and purposefully. Indeed, one of the key issues for him when he moved to our hilly Pennine area was the sloping terrain and the distance to the shops from his care home. Therefore, in the first few weeks here, he eagerly eyed up a public minibus service that provides a circular route and calls outside the home every half hour. I guess that this represented the independence that comes with mobility – and which he sensed that he had now finally lost.

On the occasions since then when he has wanted/ demanded to go out on his own (he never has, though), the care home manager has nervously acknowledged that she can’t stop him. Her hesitancy relates to The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) that came into force with the Mental Capacity Act of 2005. My contact with the care home means that I am now aware of this Act which treads a fine line with Human Rights Act of 1998 which asserts that people can only be deprived of liberty in ‘certain, predefined circumstances’. This means that unless a care home decides that staff need to exercise complete control over the movement of an elder and makes a successful DoLS application, an elder could, quite legitimately, walk out on his or her own. In reality, they will probably be strongly discouraged – ‘restraint’ and ‘restriction’ are seen as less intense approaches to DoLS.

I have never seen this scenario at Dad’s care home, though my guess is that Dad is the most likely candidate to make a run/ stumble for it. This reminds me of a poem by the Irish poet, Paul Durcan, whose work I enjoy for its black humour: Golden Mothers Driving West.

In this poem, the poet’s mother and two of her friends in a nursing home make an escape – there’s quite a contrast between the second line: Mummy had been sitting there in an armchair for two years and the final line: You are pirouetting expectantly for the last time. Dad may not be a dancer but he certainly enjoys keeping active and the opportunities and his capacity to be active are diminishing. A few weeks ago he declared that he couldn’t walk any more and gave way to a wheelchair but the next day he was back on his feet and ready to walk, even if it meant the more than occasional hazardous fall. Indeed, although we left him behind today, yesterday afternoon he valiantly managed a short walk on a rough path (but the smoothest I could think of) near another of our local reservoirs.

A week ago, as Dad and I set out from the home on one of these ‘escapes’, another visitor leaving the home looked at me with surprise and said perfectly amiably: Are they allowed out then? ‘Of course’, I replied, somewhat self righteously, ‘why wouldn’t they be?’ Don’t get me wrong, he quickly came back with: its good for them – I just didn’t realise. Of course, the truth is, having got out through the door, it’s mostly very difficult for elders to get around – but that’s another post altogether.

Age UK (2015) Factsheet. Available at: http://www.ageuk.org.uk/Documents/EN-GB/Factsheets/FS62_Deprivation_of_Liberty_Safeguards_fcs.pdf?dtrk=true