“People with severe ME need a high level of sensitively delivered care. Not everyone has an informal support network of caring relatives and friends. Many are living alone, without family support. People in this situation are highly vulnerable, totally reliant on public services, and right now, often scared — sadly, with good cause.”
This is the campaign theme for today – Severe M.E.Day – and it's been selected by The 25% Group for people with severe M.E.
They say they coming across more and more cases in the UK where their members are encountering “truly dreadful responses” to requests for support from Social Care.
Helen Brownlie has written a piece for the Phoenix Rising website in which she says that, as an advocacy worker for the group,
“My time is increasingly taken up with trying to help people with home-care problems. There’s a perfect storm at work, leaving people desperate to enhance the understanding of severe ME and care needs with their local social services departments and paid carers.”
And she adds:
“Home care is an essential service, needed right here and now, to help people who require assistance with the most basic needs, such as access to food, access to water, keeping clean, and toileting.
“This is simply essential. People who are too ill to look after themselves can only rely on others to help them. They have no choice. A person cannot just switch themselves off until such time as home care services get wise to what is needed and become genuinely motivated to provide it.”
It's a message written from the heart. Read it in full HERE.
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