So is a Granny Crèche the answer to our ageing population?

How many of us baby boomers, and apparently there are around 17 million born between 1945 and 1965, are parenting our parents? And in some cases, because women have delayed having children until they were older, are still parenting children and an elderly parent at the same time. They are caught in what caring organisations call a ‘caring squeeze’ While the needs of both elderly parent and child can be quite similar the reality is very different. A child will eventually go to school and become independent; an elderly person is a deteriorating situation, sometimes with no visible time limit.

But what if you could drop your child off at school and your mother at the work place crèche before going on to work yourself

A granny crèche is not a new idea. I remember writing about a lady many years ago who had been dropped her elderly mother at her work’s elderly care centre. She told me that she felt she had come full circle as she remembered taking her daughter to nursery before going to work and now she was doing the same thing for her mother.

 

She was a shift worker at the old Peugeot car plant in Coventry (the day centre still operates but plant has since closed) and when her mother fell and broke her hip she never really recovered. It left her physically fragile and dementia started. She took her mother at 9 in the morning to the day care centre at the car plant and would pick her up when she finished her shift at 3 p.m. It made a big difference to this lady's life as she had told me then that it would have been difficult for her to carry on working as she couldn’t have left her mother on her own.

 

The day centre was run by the Motor and Allied Trades Benevolent Fund (BEN) and was set up in 1997 with money from Peugeot and the British Racing Drivers’ Club. It began out of concern for the mental health of workers struggling to care for elderly relatives. Workers from Ford, Jaguar and Peugeot pay a voluntary contribution then of between 50p and £2 a week which helped subsidise the cost for those using it. These kinds of day centres are very valuable places not only because they give carers respite and the opportunity to carry on their own lives, but also because they give the elderly a place where they can share experiences with like-minded people.

 

How can we ever understand what it must be like to lose a partner after 55 years? Or what it was like to live through the war? Or To be staring at death which is an imminent part of their life? We are all so busy juggling work, children, partners and social life that sadly we don’t have the time to sit and reminisce.

 

Would my mother have wanted to go to a granny crèche? I doubt it she was a very shy person. Granny crèches are all very well but it is not a baby-sitting service that is needed but a change of attitude towards the elderly.  The day centre in Coventry had the right attitude, a place where people can share experiences and enjoy the final chapter in their lives. But we should not be putting our elderly on the daily ‘to do’ list, to be juggled between shopping, children and workplace. There has to be another solution. Thoughts please????