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Settling into a Care Home

Our Dad was recently diagnosed with Alcoholic Dementia, he was taken into the hospital at the end of November where numerous doctors did tests etc and unfortunately this was the outcome. He spent a few months in hospital and although he was very confused at first, he settled down and was quite content there.

However, as he was physically fit there was no need for him to be the hospital any longer. We all agreed for his safety (as he is a wanderer) that he would need to be in a residential care home, as he lived alone in a flat.

He has been in Holmer House for just over 2 weeks now. We are struggling trying to settle him in and explain what is going on. We have been very upfront and honest with him, however his ability to take in new information disappears within the space of minutes and we are constantly repeating ourselves.

He is understandably very anxious all the time and we are finding it very difficult to calm him. We visit every weekend, the last 2 weekends he wanted to go out, so we took him out. The first weekend he seemed very happy to be out, but still didn’t understand where he was living and why. This weekend, was a complete nightmare, he was very emotional and extremely confused and couldn’t retain any information.

My questions are:

How long should we expect it to take before he settles into the care home?

Should we be taking him out at the weekend-is this making it worse?

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we can calm him down so he is less anxious and frightened?

My sister and I are the only family he has and we are really stressed about all of this and just want to do the best for him.

Many Thanks

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