David it is completely your place to insist on full time medical care for Fran , if you don’t feel competent to , then I am sure someone will help you. I think your issues with Gill are a sign of the way your frustration is affecting you magnified by a personality clash that is probably neither of your faults
It is true that the functioning of some specialist mattresses can be affected by other things being placed on them
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I think that should be the aim, but right now it is an optimistic one. The staff shortages in social care are huge!
It may well be my place @Lizzie1 but reality is quite different. Anybody can insist all they like but if the resources, including especially, human ones, are not there then nothing will happen. When we were first granted these visits a couple of years ago I think, they were authorised for 3 per week plus one for cleaning. We have never ever had more than 2, simply because there was nobody to do them.
This week is the first week of the new regime, no less than 5 visits in the mornings and 5 in the evenings. So what has happened? Yesterday the normal morning one and the first evening one. Today? Nothing. An hour after Christine was supposed to be here there is nobody. I knew she couldn’t come because of illness, she told me herself, but the planning still shows a visit, so I had to get up at 6.30 this morning just in case.
I do not agree that I am in any way at fault in my clashes with Gill. She asks a question, I start to answer, she butts in, I try to answer she butts in again I raise my voice, she accuses me of aggression. How in the name of goodness is that my fault? Further more what ever I say, she contradicts. She defends the indefensible. She asks me if I have done so and so suggested at the meeting 3 weeks ago, I say I haven’t because I have forgotten which is why I needed it in writing. That was promised at the meeting, I watched the man write down my email address, I heard him say he would send me a resume within a couple of days. 24 days have passed since that promise, no resume. When in answer to her question I relate that in a matter of fact (because it is a fact) voice, does Gill sympathise as both Christelle (who lables Gill ‘dominante’) and Christine do? No she does not, instead she comes up with all excuses she can think of as to why they shouldn’t honour the promise and says blandly ‘you will get a dossier in due course’.
I appreciate the offers from @cat and others to help but if the money or the people aren’t there even Vladimir Putin’s tanks won’t shift these people.
It’s been a year David, Gill first started with you in Feb last year. Shows how hard this year has been for you if you think it longer.
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Have you considered residential care
And as a health care professional if someone raised their voice at me I wouldn’t be happy
Is it really Jane? Perhaps I am confusing it with the initial granting of the visits by the Departement, but yes, it does feel much longer.
And as a health care professional if someone raised their voice at me I wouldn’t be happy
And if you treated your patients and families the way this monstrous woman treats me you would deserve it. Especially if you were shouting too, as she does.
I had to go to my MT’s yesterday. The secretariat is plastered with notices about incivility and another one explaining that there was a shortage of doctors due to retirement and no replacements.
My MT has stopped using Keldoc because people were misusing it, making appointments and not turning up or annulling them.
There is a huge amount of frustration on both sides and I can’t help but think that if doctors were paid more we wouldn’ be in this appalling situation.
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That is quite possibly the problem? It is so easy to get addresses wrong when writing them down.
If the money or the people aren’t there even Vladimir Putin’s tanks won’t shift these people.
All I can do here is offer sympathy and gently point out that if you were in the UK you would be probably having to pay a small fortune for private carers. Again, having been through all this with my mother I can tell you that you are getting way more help, assistance and input than my parents did. And with a much shorter timescale.
But I know comparisons don’t help.
Did you make any notes at the meeting to help you remember what was said / agreed? That might help?
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Another question / thought - are the three carers English speakers?
Same with dentists, I overheard the receptionist having a terrible time with a caller trying to explain that the cabinet books were full and there was just no chance of any appointments. Felt very sorry for her but just shows how time has caught up with France as years ago, you could walk into any dentist or doctor anywhere and be seen even without a rdv. I do also wonder if there are too many hypochondriacs here who go just for the teeniest thing they could get treated at the chemist for or given a medication and the bags of medication they come away with too. I also think the compensation culture of sueing medical professionals has arrived and many don’t want to go into the professions now.
I didn’t take notes at the meeting because my hearing problems can’t allow me to keep up with rapid spoken French which was explained to them as the reason why I needed a written resume. But my arthritis would make such a thing impossible in English as well.
As regards the email address, they know my name, and my email address is the simplest form of that. In any case I have been written to before by the different offices concerned. One lady, who wasn’t at this meeting, follows our discussions with an email as a matter of course.
Christine is English, bilingual and married to a Frenchman, Christelle is French and speaks no English, discussions with her are a valued experience for me every week. Gill is Scottish and can be well understood.
I absolutely sympathise with you about Gill and think your strategy of avoidance should be deployed whenever possible. If charm efforts to get to know her, try to make her a friend etc, even humour to try to find common ground, have been tried.
You don’t want to lose any of the carers you’ve got, as Cat says you’re quite possibly getting more support than many maybe even here in France too.
Plus they all talk to each other and work in the same department so it might be hard to isolate any negatives to just Gill one day if the department comes under even more pressure.
It goes against the grain but have you tried to pretend to be a little more submissive, ask her advice on little things, ask about her most interesting experiences in career or life or family etc, doesn’t come naturally when the person has a ‘need’ to be dominant over you but IME this can ‘calm’ them
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No Karen, the only thing that works with Gill is absence, and the heart does not grow fonder, just less likely to experience an attack. The last row had me squeezing my head in my hands because she wouldn’t shut up and I honestly thought I could have some kind of seizure.
They all meet very rarely, the office is not in their patch and they are all wizzing about here and there in their little cars. Only Christelle knows her of old and she is not a fan.
Just to emphasise they are not all like Gill. I have to go to Clermont Ferrand tomorrow and I can only do it without Fran if Christelle is definitely here for her usual 2 hours in the afternoon, so I texted her and her answer confused me into thinking she thought I was putting her off because I wanted to take Fran with me. 
So I phoned Christine who then phoned Christelle and got the assurance that she will be here tomorrow and that she had understood what I meant all along. 
You can see why I didn’t phone her. 
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Well all went well yesterday even though a series of messages from Christelle were quite confusing. Like many people texting her command of her own language seems quaint to me who tries very hard at all times to be correct.
When I got home at around 6.30pm I could get no coherent information out of Fran, she can’t even remember if 1 or 2 people visited her but I now think after re-reading all Christelle’s texts that instead of leaving on schedule at 4 pm she stayed with Fran till 6pm when I believe Gill arrived for Christine’s scheduled half hour. This is because at one point she asked me what time I would be back and later, when I was, if I was. She really does go above and beyond, remember she is only there for cleaning purposes and she had in fact cleaned inside the fridge as promised last week. But there is evidence on the back of an old envelope that she had been talking to Fran and initiating her into the wonders of the French langauge because there is a picture of the sun with ‘soleil’ alongside and other common words.
I believe, for 2 reasons, that Gill was here, because she changed Fran’s pants and is the only one of us to put them on with the label at the back. Also there is a scruffy jumper on the back of a chair which I am sure she has left by mistake before.
I thanked Christelle by text for all she had done last night and this morning there was a reply with ‘gros bisous’ .
This brings me to another point that maybe @vero could help me with regarding French customs and practices. I have said before that, because my earliest experiences living here were in specific groups, routiers, petanquers, old age dancers, where we all tutoyer either instantly or soon, I am much more at ease with that form of address. I asked Christelle some weeks ago if we could and she laughed and agreed readily, however both in speech and in these texts she uses ‘vous’ and then sends bisous to me. Could there possibly be on her part a lingering feeling of a client/servant relationship?
Hardly in the spirit of egalite and confusing for a mere Anglo-Saxon even of many years residential standing. I remember at work the Patron was always Monsieur and vous (until I retired), whereas his son, 2nd in command, was always first names and tu. 
No it’s respect for her elders. There is a young women on our beautification committee who is exactly the same. After a few years I proposed tu-toie, to which she readily agreed, and steadfastly continues with vous.
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Do you continue with ‘tu’ then ? My instinct is to continue as it is easier for me to do so.
Jus back from the post box and there is a 6 page document regarding Fran’s care for the next 2 years.
What it boils down to are 1 hour care mornings 7/7 and half hour in the evenings 7/7. 
The weekly cleaning that Christelle provides is cut from 2 hours to 1 and a half. Can’t argue with that because there isn’t that much for her to do but I will miss the chats we have in the half hour while she is waiting to clock out. I will have to clean more myself in order to get that back again. 
Haven’t fully digested it all yet but it seems that we will have to pay just under € 92 / month but will get € 80 back from the Departement.
I have 15 days to object on the form provided if I disagree. I am sure I won’t be needing that.
Yes I tui-toie her. In agreeing to do so she is basically agreeing that it’s ok for you to do so, even tho’ she doesn’t!
I’m glad you’re getting more help. We have a friend not too far from you whose wife had dementia. Reluctantly he was persuaded to arrange respite care for her. This was really successful and the manager at ephad indicated that he could get a week a month for her in the care home. He didn’t want that much but it did allow him to go to England for their daughter’s wedding. Have you asked for this respite care for Fran ? It would be good for you too.
My mum went into a care home after 7 weeks in hospital and the relief was great that I no longer had to consider who would be looking after her when I wasn’t close by . She died 3 months later but the care she received was compassionate and respectful. The staff were all lovely, much to my relief.
Your journey with Fran does resonate with me. For the last year Mum didn’t recognise us or believe she had had children, denied she had ever been married!
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I haven’t asked for respite care but have agreed that it would be welcome and I think it is still under discussion. Especially now if these new arrangements work out, 7 days a week, which will ironically put more on me than at present. This is because in order to get myself up and sorted I need to get up earlier to be out of the way when the morning ones come, at present twice a week, now that will be 7 days a week and, because of pressure on the service they don’t always turn up which means that I am up earlier for nothing.
Not complaining about that, I can fit in with it and everything helps. 