We have a situation which is complicated! We are living with my husband aunt and are the sole caregivers! A friend of his aunt went out and gain POA/Trustee before we could gain conservatorship! The home is in need of repairs and her bathroom needs to be modified for her safety! His aunt has Alzheimer/Dementia and she has had numrerous falls because it is hard for her to get around in! She is paralyzed on the right side in which she drags her left leg and her arm is restricted! So stepping up into the shower causes her to lose her balance! The carpeting has feces and urine from her dogs now and before which is being transferred over to our carpet! We have been here for 5 years and the carpets have never been cleaned or replaced. We don't have the money to replace it...we are on a fixed income! His aunt also needs a power chair! When we take her out she gets tired and weak after 50 feet! She walks with a walker and is 83 years.
We pays the monthly expenses for the home, which is paid for! The POA/Trustee is not helping us with his aunt and is only concern about her money! What can we do to make her fix up the home, get the things needed and done for his aunt and make this home safe and healthy for all of us!
Not to sound condescending, but if you are going to take care of an elderly person, you have to actually DO the work to take care of them. You need to buy a shower chair for her to sit on when she showers, a toilet chair to either have on the toilet or in any given area she is in, and also rails IN the shower, outside the shower when she steps out, and rubber backed mats to lay down on the floor and tub floor so she cannot slip and fall.
If this is too much for you to handle, you should really check into getting her into a facility that an take care of her the way she needs to be taken care of. To allow her to live in feces and urine is just unbelievable, it makes me think she is being neglected in other ways as well.
I would see how much is costs to rent the carpet cleaning machine from the grocery/pharmacy store (if they do that in your area) I sometimes see Rug Doctor vac's available to rent. Try doing that to keep the cost down. Also see if there are any reasonably priced Carpet Cleaning co's in your area..perhaps some might have deals? Or a high school kid who wants to earn some money can do it for you.
If you check your local pharmacy in my case Rite-Aid..they have a lot of stuff you can get to make the shower more secure. I got my mom a tub chair..for when she takes baths, we just set it in the tub and have her sit on it and do most of the cleaning while she's sitting. Our tub has a hand held spray nozzle so it works pretty good to wash all the soap off.
I don't know if you are eligible for a power chair..you may get that looked into...or you can just get a simple wheelchair. I bought my mom's new around 189.00, but if you look in the classified ads or thrift shops you can find them a heck of a lot cheaper.
For the doggies, could they be confined to a outdoors or patio area or even baby doors on the kitchen entrances and keep them in there...the tiled kitchen floor would be easier to clean. I told my g/f to do that when she got dogs since she never had dogs and finally she listened to me and got them and now swears by them to keep all her little poopers in line...lol!
The first thing you need to do is find a way to do the modifications and repairs. Hold a yard sale if you have to and look at their budget and squeeze what you can extra out of it to cover the repairs. You can do this. Repairs for floors are not too expensive - you can learn how to install vinyl flooring on your own. Vinyl flooring is both cheap and works great for paralyzed victims for shuffling and wheelchairs. It is also easy to install - I learned from Youtube and Home Depot. Someone at a local church might be able to help you too.
Second, people still have rights as long as they are legally competent. To be declared legally incompetent, a psych eval had to be done and a medical professional had to state and document incompetency. If a person has not been through the actual process to be legally declared incompetent, then you can still take that person with you to a lawyer and redo paperwork.
Third, speak to the primary doctor about a power wheel chair. That's the first step. From my own experience, a person who is paralyzed or limited in arm strength on one side can not physically operate a manual wheelchair - they spin around in circles. You probably need a power wheelchair, not a manual one. Not even a scooter works out for my dad - the 3 wheels are hard to balance on and they are also difficult to operate and get into for a paralyzed person. A power chair with controls on the left side would probably work best, it is the only thing my dad with one arm can operate and get into on his own.
Modifications to the doors are cheap, too - you would need to make sure the doors in the home are widened to 36 inches wide for a power chair to work. Start with the most important doors first - the entrance door and the bathroom door. You would also need to build or buy a wheelchair ramp as well. You can find out a lot of info on ramps on the net.
Getting into a shower when you are paralyzed is scary if not impossible on your own. You could try installing grab bars near the toilet to make it easier to use. You could install a toilet-bidet on the toilet to help keep tushy clean instead of toilet paper, something that is difficult for paralyzed individuals to use. You could try bathing from the toilet rather than the shower using a no rinse soap and shampoo you can purchase online or through walmart or walgreens or similar stores. These are all items that cost less than $100 each - the bidet, the door and door frame, the soap, the grab bars. They are also easy to install and you can find a lot of info on how to online. You could do them slowly, one at a time or one each month or two. As a caregiver, you need to think outside the box. You could try cleaning tushy from the toilet without a toilet-bidet (not a bidet, but a device that fits onto a toilet and works like a bidet) too. Use a spray bottle filled with warm water and rinse from the back and front while sitting on the toilet. Hope this helps