One of the TV programs I used to enjoy watching was “Through the Keyhole”, which involved two teams trying to guess which celebrity lived in a particular house with the expert Loyd Grossman wandering around the rooms and pointing out various features which would reflect on the life and character of the owner.
A unique part of my job when I started as a GP was doing home visits, and like Loyd Grossman, I loved to browse and notice the décor, whether they had books or not, the personal paraphernalia and decorations in their front rooms as this gave a real insight into the person I was dealing with rather than a mechanical view of their vital signs. This kind of information was invaluable for the doctor-patient relationship, which would be therapeutic if this was established, but this requires nurturing and time to develop trust. The visit would only be needed if someone was too ill or frail to attend the surgery, so the majority of our visits were to the elderly or infirm.
One visit was eye-opening and heartbreaking at the same time when the owner of a corner shop called me to see one of my patients who was living in a room above his shop. Previously, this elderly Indian lady had her own flat, and I thought she had returned to India as she did not have any family here, so I was surprised to see her name in a different address.
It was when I went into the shop and went upstairs (I recognised the same format from Qaisar Nani’s shop) and saw a bewildered old lady was crying as she wanted to go back to her flat. She only spoke Gujrati but was able to understand Hindi/Urdu, and everyone seemed very evasive about why she had been dispossessed of her flat and was now living in a room which was effectively a store for goods needed in the shop and a dirty mattress on the floor for her to sleep on.
I spoke to social services about this, and after they called in their elder abuse/financial safeguarding team, they found out that someone had “befriended” her and promised to help sell her flat and give her a nice nest egg to live in India. But, he sold her flat, pocketed her money, and she had been passed along a network of contacts so she could not be classified as homeless. After a nomadic journey of living in various properties, she ended up near her old flat, which was why she was so upset and felt her proximity may help her get her flat or money back.
She never recovered either and was also placed by the council in one of the nursing homes which have started to appear catering for Asian residents’ needs. This was one “through the keyhole” moment which I would not have wanted to witness, but talking to the social services team, this type of financial abuse of the elderly is not uncommon and is another reason why we must ensure the most vulnerable in society are protected, and we do not turn a blind eye to things which are happening to our neighbours let alone our family and friends. In fact, in the Prophetic hadith, a neighbour is not just defined as someone living next to you but encompasses a circle of 30 houses around you, which is clearly a building block for the foundation of a caring society and can minimise/stop incidents like this “homeless” elderly lady.
