87-year-old woman with dementia forced to sleep on the streets with carer son

An 87-year-old Second World War survivor with disability and severe dementia found herself spending the night sleeping next to a canal in Birmingham with her 45-year-old son, because he quit his job to look after her.

Irena Neniuviewe and her carer son Darius spent Monday evening outdoors with only blankets and the clothes on their backs, sleeping alongside a canal lined with rats and hard drug users. Darius told the Birmingham Mail: “It was a horrible place. There were some rats, drug users around - but what choice have we got?"

Irena's dementia had progressed to such a stage that Darius, who has lived and worked in Birmingham for the past seven years, was forced to quit his job to care for her.

Not long afterwards, the former warehouse worker found his benefits had been stopped, and that’s when the trouble started. He couldn’t afford to pay his rent and had to leave his home.

He’s had no support for himself or his mother from the local council, as he explains: “City Council refuse to help because my benefits have stopped.”

The carer now finds himself in a precarious situation. He said: “I can’t go to work, people just say I’m lazy. But if I leave my mum for a long time and something might happen, she doesn’t speak English. This is horrible. I cannot leave her.”

Darius and Irena were told that they had to leave sheltered accommodation at the end of last week. They had only been able to stay there for a week because of the high demand for sheltered accommodation in the area.

They then spent Monday evening sleeping next to the canal, and the following day they moved to one of the city’s town squares where there were 150 people being served hot food and drink.

The pair were spotted by charity worker Raj Rana, the co-founder of a soup kitchen called Let’s Feed Brum. He called it 'shocking' and said seeing a woman nearly in her 90s alongside heroin addicts was a rare sight.

Irena and Mark are staying in Britannia Hotel for a couple of nights, due to the help of Raj, but their future is uncertain after that. Mark has no work and only has Irena’s pension to keep them afloat.