“I was the one who got him into Orpea, in good faith, because I thought it was a good establishment.” It must be said that when he visited the building of the Orpea retirement home in Vence (Alpes-Maritimes), in 2017, Laurent Gény was won over. “The building was recent. In the hall there were flowers, everything seemed clean.” But when he thinks about it, Laurent Gény realizes that he has been “dumb”. “I hadn’t understood that it’s not beautiful lights or flowers at the entrance that make residents feel good.he confides to franceinfo, but the human, the staff, the organization.”
>> Abuse in nursing homes: three questions about “Les Fossoyeurs”, the book that shakes the French giant Orpea
Very quickly, the 50-year-old realizes that his mother is the victim of abuse. The urinary protections are missing from the 20th of the month. He complains to management. Nothing works. In 2018, her mother fell and seriously injured herself, ending up in the emergency room. It was then that he decided to change his mother’s accommodation establishment for dependent elderly people (Ehpad). “I hesitated for a long time to take my mother home, but she is severely disabledhe concedes. It would have taken a lot of care and my house was too small and not at all suitable to accommodate him.”
If Laurent Gény was able to change his mother from a retirement home, not all families had this chance, often limited by their finances or their means of travel. This is the case of Clairette Berrebi, soon 87 spring. “My kids told me, ‘Do what you can’. I did what I thought was best.” The best solution she found for her husband was to place him in a Parisian public nursing home. The octogenarian has been cared for there for almost a year. “Before, he was in a Korian establishment, but fortunately we moved him visibly”jokes the Parisian, alluding to the upcoming revelations about one of the leading groups in the sector. “It was not good theresummarizes the octogenarian. And then, it was too far.”
From now on, Clairette Berrebi can visit her husband three times a week. The Ehpad is located a five-minute walk from his apartment. “Fortunately I’m still holding on to my legs”, she said in a half-proud, half-amused tone. Even though she is still standing on her own two legs, it is with a heavy heart that she had to leave her husband in this establishment. Impossible for her to keep him at home. “He’s in a wheelchair. I’m barely 35 kilos, I can’t lift him,” does she regret. Lately it was falling often, including at night. “I had to call the fire department, or else I had to ask my neighbours. But I couldn’t keep waking them up at 4 a.m.,” she says before letting go: “In short, it was no pie.”
“For many families, placing their loved ones in an Ehpad is the last resort”explains to franceinfo Maryse Gautier Leghlid, head of theSolidarity association ffriends of the people received in nursing homes in the city of Paris (Asfapade). Like Clairette Berrebi, Brigitte Maraone finally resolved to place her mother, suffering from cognitive disorders, in an Ehpad.
For four months, she tried to take care of it in her Paris apartment. In the only room of her 63 square meters, she slipped a bed to watch over her mother, who was unable to “differentiate between day and night”nor the knife of his fork. “It’s a long time, four months”, confides to franceinfo the Parisian. “I am not trained to take care of an elderly person. My place is too small to keep her. If I could have done otherwise, I would have.”
Since the revelations about abuse in retirement homes, Brigitte Maraone has redoubled her vigilance, asking even more questions than she already did. She assures him, from now on, she will no longer hesitate to report her observations to the regional health agency or to file a complaint if she observes ill-treatment. But it would be impossible for her to take her mother home. “If I kept it, it was my health that went through it.”
Muriel Faure has been fighting for seven years to denounce the abuse suffered by her mother in a retirement home in the Dordogne. Over the past few months, she has noticed that her condition has further deteriorated and that she “hasn’t had a toilet under a shower since July”. She also noted that her mother has difficulty hearing and her ears are very dirty. She seeks the advice of an ENT doctor. The observation is clear: hearing loss is due to plugs that have formed in the ear due to lack of hygiene.
Despite this ill-treatment, the sixty-something dreads changing her mother’s establishment. She fears that the situation will repeat itself and that it will be “not very useful”. Muriel Faure lives in a rural area, and the supply of retirement homes is not flourishing there, “unless you drive 40 minutes”. She still prefers to be able to visit her mother often, to maintain the bond and make sure that the situation does not worsen. In early January, she filed a complaint and contacted a lawyer. She hopes that the revelations made in Victor Castanet’s book will help her. And that she will finally be taken seriously.