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Protecting Our Parents: Capturing a unique view

2014-05-01T09:29:58+00:00

We were lucky to have a year to film Protecting Our Parents.

It didn’t always feel it during the long winter months, late nights and early mornings my team from BBC Bristol’s documentary department spent in the busy elderly care wards of Heartlands Hospital Birmingham.

But we came to realise that time is a precious commodity across an elderly care system swelled by our nation’s rapidly ageing population.

Protecting Our Parents is a documentary series about all of us: our parents, grandparents and the many health and social care professionals that look after them as they get older, and will care for us in our old age too.

Before filming could even begin it had taken an additional 18 months to put in place permission to film.

The hospital elderly care team, community and hospital social workers and the scores of health and care professionals were needed to enable us to try to make sense of a system that, for the older people at its heart, is often bewildering.

Doctors, social workers and husband Leonard try to decide what's best for Kathleen

Being able to view the system from the perspective of the professionals, older people and their families gave us a privileged position from which to follow cases.

Hospital-based social workers and doctors rarely have the chance to see their clients or patients in the community, but we were able observe what many of the professionals can’t.

We filmed contributors leave hospital for home with social care packages that had been carefully designed over weeks, sometimes months on the ward - only to be readmitted within weeks, sometimes days.

On occasions, we’d know before the community social work team, the GP or the hospital consultants that our contributors were back in A&E or on a ward, because we’d have the information quicker from carers and families.

This isn’t because individual medics and social workers aren’t hardworking and caring.

It’s because what we saw is symptomatic of the fault lines of the elderly care system, between health and social care, hospital and community.

From our time on the hospital wards and in the community, we came to realise that the system is often measured, officially at least, against the ticking clock.

There are the hospital waiting time targets of A&E; there is pressure to free-up acute beds on wards for the next admission; there are the council-hired carers trying to meet their clients’ often complex care needs in 20 minute sessions.

Most of the many dedicated professionals we followed managed to find the extra minutes to spend with their patients or clients, regardless of the pressures of their workload.

Dr Peter Wallis at Birmingham Heartlands hospital during a consultation with a patient

But we were able to spend hours with our elderly contributors, not just to film, but to sit and talk, make a cup of tea, fetch a paper, watch the football on the TV together.

Building up trust and understanding over not just weeks, but months, was essential to filming with often frail, vulnerable people and their families as they went through what for many was the most difficult episode of their lives.

It also meant we had the time to learn about their lives and not just the current crisis they were going through.

They were all hard working people, who’ve led rich, full and colourful lives – like our own.

'I never expected to age so quickly, and I didn't feel that I aged so quickly'

Inevitably, the series has had a lasting impact on all of my team who filmed, edited and produced it.

For me, having put off thinking about old age for as long as possible, I’ve started to have the conversations with my own parents about their futures and have dared to contemplate what elderly care might look like for my generation.

Above all, that is what we want this series to achieve: a national discussion about how we treat older people and what we want from old age care.

With the system already struggling to cope and the number of pensioners set to grow by half in the next 20 years, it’s an urgent conversation to be had.

Alice Perman is the series producer on Protecting Our Parents.

Protecting Our Parents continues on Thursday 1 May at 9pm on BBC Two and BBC Two HD. For further programme times please see the episode guide.

If you, or someone you know, is affected by the issues raised in this programme, please see the information and support page for details of organisations which can help (available until Tuesday, 10 June).

More on Protecting Our Parents

The Open University: Find out more about the ageing debate and being a social worker
Protecting Our Parents: Information and Support

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

When I Get Older: My time with Ivy

2012-07-04T11:45:19+00:00

My main reflection after making When I Get Older is that it was a privilege to stay with Ivy in her home.

Ivy is a pensioner whose housing benefit doesn't cover her rent and she's in debt.

I found it challenging and humbling to live with her for four days and see how she had to analyse the £3 disposable income in her purse every day for food, clothing, toothpaste, toilet rolls, cleaning materials... you cannot do it.

Gloria and Ivy go shopping

I will never shop in the same way again.

I don't have to analyse every crumb that I buy and Ivy absolutely did. For four days primarily we ate bread.

I said to her one morning, can I have an egg, and she said no, because egg and chips makes a dinner.

Also the point about Ivy that we didn't see in the programme is that she is illiterate. A lot of her bills she is not able to read and so her management of her debt was very bad.

At the same time, she was very honourable in meeting the payments but going further into debt.

It was the combination of that plus her considerable health problems that she was so worn down. She'd given up in attitude so that she didn't ask for help although the help was there.

Maybe like a lot of people she didn't know how to ask.

As a mum - and we all do this as parents - she was trying to shield her children from how bad things were for her.

I took her out for a meal once, my treat. She said to me afterwards, "Do you mind me asking how much that was?"

I said it was £48 and she went "Oh my goodness, that would have fed me for a month."

So there was a big intake of breath every so often.

Gloria and Ivy

Even though she knew her privately rented house was eating up all her money Ivy had never asked her local authority for help. She felt that there was no point because it was going to be a four or five year waiting list.

Everything I suggested, her answer was negative, negative, negative.

And it wasn't that I'm involved in TV, it's that somebody tweaked her life that bit and showed her that if you go to your local council they can help with your debt management, if you ask the housing association you might just get an apartment that's cheaper.

I believe that attitude towards ageing is crucial. No matter how near you are to your third life, as I call it, it's the attitude of keeping your brain stimulated and yourself busy.

It's getting up, keeping your friends, and doing stuff for yourself.

I do accept of course that someone like Ivy has health problems but she is quite strong and there are lots of things she can do for herself.

It didn't make the final cut but when we took her to literacy lessons she was top of the class - she realised she knew more than she thought she did.

Since the stimulation of being in the programme, Ivy now has a new life. She has a lovely, cosy apartment which is far more efficient and affordable. She hardly needs to turn the heating on because the heat rises from the flats below - another saving which helps.

It's close to her daughter and she's got that inbuilt family help back. For Ivy now there's a feel-good factor every day instead of sitting alone indoors.

Since we finished filming, she'll ring me up occasionally and she'll go "Gloria, I bought fresh meat today and fresh fruit!" - because I used to say to her, you can't only eat toast.

Ivy taught me probably far more than I showed her.

I was moved by all the contributors in different ways.

Malcolm and Pat on how their marriage has changed since she became his carer

You could see how Philip, who lost his wife, had gone down that black hole of grief and I do understand that from my experience of losing my daughter. It's a mindset, you have to do a lot to help yourself get back out.

I felt very emotional watching Pat, the carer, and her husband Malcolm because you could see (and she was honest about it) her life had been stripped away.

And with John I was amused that there's Peggy, this lady who's cantankerous and on her own but she's quite fit and happy to lead her own life. And I thought, well if that's what you want in your older age, why not? It suits her and that's it.

I hope that by highlighting aspects of old age that we collectively look at the culture of respecting the elderly in the UK.

In countries like France and Italy often you get four generations all living together. Older people have dignity. Their opinion is asked for and people listen to them. I think that many older people feel invisible in this country.

Maybe through some of the issues raised by When I Get Older we could all do a little bit extra in our community.

After all, we all individually know an Ivy, a grandparent or a neighbour where we might be able to bring something to their lives, if only to have a cup of tea and listen to them.

Gloria Hunniford gave this interview at a press screening for When I Get Older.

When I Get Older begins at 9pm on BBC One on Wednesday, 5 July. For further programme times please see the episode guide.

If you would like further information about the issues raised in When I Get Older, please visit the information and support page.

The series is part of the When I'm 65 season - a selection of programmes about issues facing the elderly. The season includes The Town That Never Retired, How To Live Beyond 100 and June Brown: Respect Your Elders.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.