Oh goodness gracious me – I am tearing my hair out here. I have mismanaged things, and poor old mum is taking the flak.

Three weeks ago I finally heard I’d be getting direct payments backdated to November 2 (see the blog for November 14 2007). On January 11, therefore, a lump sum of more than £5000 landed in the special account I'd set up. The council will add to this at the rate of – wait for it - £403 per week.

£403 per week! Whoopeedoo!

This will completely revolutionise my life. It will enable me to have a life. It is completely wonderful.

But the freedom went straight to my head. I immediately arranged with an agency for carers to come Tuesdays to Fridays from 8.15am to whenever the bus for day-care comes (which could be any time at all), and from 3.30 when it might come back, until 5.

My plan was that, free from the stress of waiting for the bus, I could leave the house at 8.30 and return at 5. Maybe I could even get some work done.

For two weeks I did just that. I set myself up with my laptop in a corner of the café in a local bookshop. At lunchtime I took a short walk, read the paper, then went back to the bookshop. Then I'd go for a swim. Complete bliss.

In the meantime mum's life was unravelling.

I was dimly aware there were a huge number of carers, rather than the 'small team' I had been promised. I certainly noticed they were nearly always late. Then there was the one who took mum's paper to read herself!

Then the wonderful people at Willows rang to say mum seemed depressed and needed changing a lot. They suggested she might have a urine infection. 'Aargh!' I thought - I don't have time to take her to the doctor.

The penny didn't drop even when, getting home five minutes late, I found mum on her own. The carer had simply gone.

From all this I averted my eyes, so desperate was I to keep my work schedule intact.

But things have became unignorable. Mum has became completely distraught. She even says she wants to kill herself. I can finally see that for the last three weeks I have been treating her as a thing, an object to be moved around at my direction, to enable me to work. I feel dreadful.

I have cancelled everything for both of us this week. I shall devote the week to getting us back to square one. Then I'll make a proper mum-orientated plan.

It must be possible, with all this money, for mum to get the care she deserves consistently with my being able to work.