A home from home

A home from home?

Who’s looking afteryour grandparents? Do they still live at home, or are they in an old people’s home? Or maybe they even live with you and your parents. This week we look at different teenagers’ experiences, and the relationships between the generations.
Zoe Hayes, Eastbourne: My gran is 82 and she lives at Broadmead Nursing Home. She’s been there for about four years now. She decided that she couldn’t cope any longer living in a big house on her own.

Mum used to go and visit her about three times a week at home, but it was obvious that she needed more care, and mum had noticed that she was starting to get confused mentally.
She couldn’t come and live with us, because we didn’t have a bedroom for her. Gran was very sad to leave her home – she’d lived there all her life – and she had to sell the house to pay for her care in Broadmead. We visit her there every Sunday. I don’t mind going there. The staff are very nice and there’s quite a good atmosphere. I’m sure it isn’t the same as living in your own house, though.
Daisy Won, Liverpool: My gran is 75 and she lives with us in our house. She came to stay with us when my granddad died, in 2001. I had to move out of my bedroom and share a room with my sister instead, but it’s normal in our culture to look after old people within the family. After all, Gran looked after my dad when he was a child, so it’s right that he should look after her now.
I don’t agree with putting old people into care homes. I think that’s just a way to put them out of sight so you can forget about them. I visited a local nursing home with my school recently, and I didn’t like it at all. The old people there looked bored, and some of them never have any visitors. I couldn’t ever live in a place like that.