SINGAPORE – A woman who went to pick up her 91-year-old mother from a dementia daycare centre when the latter was unwell said she found her mother alone in the reception area, soiled and with vomit on her clothes.
The daughter, a single woman in her 40s who is the sole caregiver, said her mother has moderate dementia and sometimes gets confused.
When the centre called to inform her that her mother was sick on April 1, she rushed from work to Ren Ci@Woodlands, a dementia daycare centre.
“My mother had asked the staff to call me and she spoke to me, saying she had vomited and wanted me to pick her up. When I got there… I found her sitting in a wheelchair alone,” said the executive, who declined to give her name or her mother’s name for fear the publicity would affect her career.
When contacted by The Straits Times, a spokesman for the centre said staff had been in her mother’s vicinity at all times.
“We checked our CCTV and confirmed that there were staff (members) present in the client’s vicinity the entire time she was waiting for her daughter,” he said.
“We also cleaned her up as best as we could after the incident of vomiting. When the client was in the toilet, our staff waited just outside. At no time did the staff walk away.”
The spokesman added that the client had refused to let the staff check whether she was wearing a diaper “and we respected her privacy”.
“There were also no clear signs of soiling while she was at the centre,” he added.
On the daycare centre’s website, it is stated that the facility “is able to manage the challenging behaviours exhibited by dementia clients through therapeutic or non-pharmacological activities”.
But the woman’s daughter questioned how the centre could have overlooked the potential seriousness of her mother’s condition.
“I learnt (online) that when an elderly person, like my mother, vomits and has diarrhoea, it is potentially dangerous as they are at a higher risk of dehydration and can result in health complications. What more, the vomit and diarrhoea were black,” she said.
“Since the daycare (centre) is just next door to Woodlands Hospital, why did they not take her there immediately, instead of letting her call me to come take her home?” she asked.
The executive said she did not take her mother to Woodlands Hospital immediately as she was afraid of being charged private rates should her mother be admitted. Instead, she took her mother to Sembawang Polyclinic for a referral to get a subsidy.
