My friend's grandmother is in a caregiving facility, she wants to get out, she was diagnosed with dementia. He wants to take her out, the insurance people have allowed for him to take her out every so often so she can get used to it. He is trying to fulfill her wish of taking her out of that place. Her son and daughter don't visit. Does he need a power of attorney to get her out? He wants to take care of her. Does he need power of attorney to take care of her? How can he get a power of attorney if she has been diagnosed with dementia? She still remembers him, remembers the house, and is pretty much interactive the great grandkids. What can my friend do to enhance his grandma's living situation?
As for Power of Attorney, the only way your friend can get POA is for his Grandmother to give him Power of Attorney, but she would need to be able to understand the legal document before an Attorney would allow her to sign on the dotted line.
If another relative has POA, your friend could get permission to remove Grandmother [which I don't recommend] and get permission to take care of her at his home. It would be much easier if he did have complete POA but it probably is too late now.
With dementia, Grandmother could be doing what is called "showboating" which means she is "acting" normal around guest, but once back at the continuing care facility, she could be confused and/or have "sundowning". Sundowning means in late afternoon or early evening the person gets really confused [my Dad had that].
Plus with dementia, it can progress quickly to another stage if a person is physically moved into a new environment, even if it is a house she's been in many time before.
By the way, it is very normal for an elder [with or without dementia] to want to move back home or out of a facility.... but in most cases "home" is where they lived as children. And in some cases the elder doesn't understand they can no longer live in and maintain a house on their own.
Having dealt with mother-in-law, father-in-law and mother who all had dementia, every one of them begged to go "home", but when asked, not one knew where "home" was. In my mom's case, she wanted to go home and live with her parents.
I do agree with you about the POA. And would also hope that one of the trusted relatives has their name on a joint account with the lady.
However 1 thing is the interaction with other people - mom says she is bored but I checked & she does 10 plus activities a week + any religious service of her religion - this young man won't be able to do that many with her so he should take that under consideration when he balances the issue
Promises are nice but sometimes they shouldn't be treated as carved in rock - we all have promised our kids things that we were unable to fulfill so to our promises to those with dementia which were said in good faith but life has a way of changing things to make following through on them unreasonable any longer
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