Hi, my name is mjo!

mjo

An adult member of my close family who has severe learning disabilities and almost no language lives in a registered care home with 24 hour but not night-waking support. She has all her life tended to have times of wakefulness during the night, when she pulls out her clothes and bedclothes and piles them on the floor. Over the last few months she has taken to urinating on them regularly and becomes distressed if people try to talk to her about it. She has been given a course of antibiotics in case it's caused by a UTI but there has been no improvement. There have also been several staff changes though the team is now more settled. Again, if anything the frequency of the behaviour has increased. Any suggestions? There has been an intensification of other challenging behavious too but this one completely stumps us. Neither the very caring support team nor I can think what to do!

iza

Hi @mjo, welcome to the community. 

What is the place where there is no night support.
If this is  a 24 hour care home than I believe there should be night shifts provided to assist people. 
It sound to me that if I would be you I will look for better care home  for your family member. There can be different reason why your member of family is wetting. Perhaps she is afraid of something or her toilets needs are not met  because when she needs toilets none is around to help.
It looks a bit suspicious to me. 
Does you members have enough family members visiting her? 
Maybe she feels lonely, bored and trying to ask for a bit attention behaving like that.

If I would be you I would observe the place more often and pop in different hours unexpected to be  seen to see  what is really going on. 

Those are my suggestions. 

Pippa_Alumni

Welcome, @mjo. I've moved this discussion into our disabled people category.

mjo

Thanks Iza. This is definitely a registered care home. None of the 5 residents has been assessed as needing waking night staff. That would cost the Local Authority a lot more. My daughter has lived there for many years. It is the place she calls home and we have been very happy with the life she has there
 There have been a lot of changes in the past year, and I think people have forgotten how she needs to be supported. I think the current support team really cares about her and are trying their best. I was wondering whether other people had come across this particular behaviour and might have ideas on how to  help her to get past it.