When my parents divorced my aunt, dad's sister, immediately got POA for my dad (who has bipolar disorder) and became his local caregiver. As a 30-something only child with my own life several states away I didn't think I should argue.
Now she's in her 80s and she is exhausted. She had dad committed to a psych hospital 3 months ago because he was belligerent, kept driving places and then getting picked up by police or taken to the hospital because he was confused. She seems to think this will force him to move to assisted living. He’s become severely depressed and can't get out of the hospital. He refuses to do any cognitive tests or any more advanced therapies because he says he's already dead and there is no point.
I went back to visit for a week in June and offered to my aunt to take over anything she wanted me to. She said there was no way I could do it all from so far away. She's been managing his finances, managing his apartment house, working with his doctors for the last 7 years. She does it all by phone and mail, she only recently learned how to move money between his accounts via the web.
She's also been cleaning out his house, more than ever since he went into the hospital. My whole visit I kept saying "we have to see where he ends up living first" when she wanted my help deciding what things to get rid of. She's down to furniture and even getting rid of his clothes! He is a pack rat, but I don't see where she gets the right to just clean him out.
He's never lived anywhere but his house in his entire 76 years (grew up there and then inherited it from his dad). I'm sure her insistence that he's never going home is not helping his mental state.
She's also terrible at sending me updates. I'm deaf and don't use the phone easily but told her she could call, and I'd get someone to transcribe voice mails. Instead, I get texts once in a while and "letters" that she types out in a Word doc and then emails. In the letters she makes everything so dramatic which I can't stand (I'm an engineer, just the facts please).
Dad's brother also lives in the area in the summer, and he stepped up to try to help find a new home for dad. Unfortunately, with his mental health diagnosis most assisted living facilities won't accept him. Without a medical diagnosis a nursing home or memory care facility won't accept him. I really think the solution is to let him go back to his own house and hire in home care as needed. Otherwise maybe we can find a special program or a group home... if he stops being so depressed.
It's all sad and I don't feel like I have much control over the situation being so far away and not legally having POA. It puts me in the place where I could try to insist my aunt steps aside, but I'm scared of that situation too.
Offer help would be my advice and do as your Dad's POA requests of you to the best of your ability.
No ALF will take your Dad. He may require psychiatric care for life; may require residential living with other mentally ill folk unable to care for themselves.
Again, for now, the aunt is managing and I think myself you are very lucky in that. The care of your dad would be likely TERRIBLY difficult.
Just my opinion and I wish your Dad well, as I do your Aunt and yourself.
I would request(or have your aunt request)that the psych hospital do an evaluation for dementia, and then let them take it from there.
There has to be some type of facility that will take him, and it should be up to the social worker at the psych hospital to do just that.
I hope for your fathers sake that things get figured out soon.
The hospital says they have tried to do cognitive tests but he refuses to cooperate so they can’t.
The social worker there has only said he’ll never get placed anywhere directly from their floor and suggested family take him home and then try finding him somewhere. He did go to his bother's house a month ago. Lasted 36 hours and the had to return to the hospital because he refused to get up off their floor even to use the bathroom and said he was dead. They’re not a good fit for caring for him, his brother has never believed in his mental illness. Thinks he’d be fine if he tried harder.
I would contact NAMI to see what services are available for your father in this age group. It seems like your aunt has been handling the situation with the POA. Your father is no longer safe to live alone because of the complexities of his mental health issues, physical failing health, and possibly the onset of dementia.