Reablement Care with Nancy West

Nancy was born in Cleveland, Ohio and is a retired lawyer. She had to travel quite a bit for school and work which resulted in her spending a lot of time in the Bay Area, Boston and New York before settling in London over forty years ago.

Nancy contacted Tiggo Care because she needed some extra help at home after undergoing surgery for a broken ankle. Following the surgery her foot was put in a cast and, due to her reduced mobility, the NHS would not send her home as she lives on her own and asked her to find a place at a care home while she recovered. Unfortunately, the care home she found wasn’t set up for respite care as it claimed and specialised in supporting dementia patients. She didn’t feel it was the right place for recovery once the cast was removed and it was also a long way from her home in Putney and her daughter. She wanted to organise her physio in Putney with visits to her home so Nancy decided to move back home and organise home care visits with Tiggo Care.

When we first started supporting Nancy she couldn’t stand up properly. She needed assistance reaching high places, support with physio, help with showering, support with transfers, and some help preparing meals. We began with daily morning and evening visits but, as Nancy got better, the visits reduced in length and frequency. After a few months, Nancy is on her way to making a full recovery and can now do most things for herself and we stopped providing services altogether. 

Nancy said: “Most people would think it was odd that everything was left out of the cupboards but due to my injury it was much easier for me if my carers left items out of the cupboards and in easy-to-access places.” Nancy added that having a consistent team of carers made things easier too because she wouldn’t need to explain how she liked things each time they visited. Instead, they knew exactly what she wanted and quickly got on with things.