Hired caregiver left before the shift ended, leaving LO with dementia alone for not sure how long. How common is this?
I'm livid. When I called the agency, they had no answers until they called the caregiver. She said she left at 7:55 tonight---impossible, when I checked what time I called the agency it was 7:55. The shift ended at 8. She's clearly lying about the time she left, and left him wet in his pants, in bed scared. He has dementia. The agency is "going to escalate" but I'm just so pissed that I'm never going to get the truth. Time for a camera.
Also just so insanely frustrated that we pay all this money for this home care and I'm still coming home to wet Depends for me to clean. His lunch was left out, the Roku was on the screen saver. I am so angry, if I saw this woman out in normal society by chance I would want to cold clock her.
Has this happened to anyone else?
7 Answers
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Keep in mind the client (LO) still has the right to refuse. If a client refuses to eat, drink or co-operate to be washed or have depends changed, a staff member cannot force them.
Maybe not relevant to your situation, but thought I'd mention it.
:)
i hope this gets solved soon!! i hope your LO today is ok! we had this problem mannnnnny times (caregiver leaving early). (so the agency set up a clocking system. QR code in our house, and the caregiver must clock in/out). problems continued:
sometimes, the caregiver did the minimummmmm.
the most dangerous thing that happened, was:
for 2 weekends, not turning up at all!! the agency can only be contacted on weekdays! any complaints must wait till monday. so the caregivers take advantage of this, and just didn't show up.
we fired the agency. (BE WARNED, like you OP, we were worried about retaliation. there are many ways to retaliate. indeed the agency retaliated, even though they were obviously in the wrong.)
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at the time, my parents could survive without daily caregiving. it was a very uncomfortable weekend, but they could survive. my parents helped each other.
now, that would be impossible. my parents NEED a daily caregiver.
we switched to private caregivers. there are problems with this too. they always showed up (good). but we've had thieves, other problems. caregivers who enjoy the POWER they have. they know you're dependent on them, and if they behave badly, you can't easily/quickly find an alternative. we've met many bad people (even with great references).
it's not easy. really.
you need luck. (no matter how well you do the background check, someone can still be a bad person).
i wish us luck!
the better the caregivers, the more peaceful your (adult child) life will be. less worries.
The agency should have, and is probably required by local regulatory authorities to operate, some sort of check-in/check-out system. That doesn't mean that the person on the end of the phone will instantly be able to see what time this caregiver left your house, but it does mean it should take them long to find out for certain.
I'm afraid such corner-cutting is not uncommon and happens for many different reasons. We occasionally coincide with caregivers from private sector/commercial agencies and... how do I put this. All is not always as it should be. I reported a concern ten days ago to my Shift Leader and was told it was not our business, but I'm fairly certain any other member of the management team would have said different and the moral is "report it to somebody else next time."
What would a satisfactory response from the agency be, on this occasion? If, say, you were to give them three strikes and out, so to speak, do you have other realistic options? If they deduct one hour from the next invoice, would that help? Are the caregivers keeping proper documentation of their shifts? - they should be, and it should include for example what time his underwear was checked or a toilet transfer offered and what was found (e.g. "pad checked, clean and dry." "Support for toilet transfer declined." That kind of thing.)
It isn't easy. I have locked eyes across a bedbound client's bed with my fellow worker when we had just finished the client's night-time routine and heard rumbly noises from down below. The poor girl almost wept: "It is LITERALLY ten past ten!" (we finish at ten sharp. If we overrun we get into all sorts of trouble because our insurance cover ends at 10pm; but then again if they will give us 2:1 calls at nine thirty...) and I did sympathise, but we are not knowingly going to leave an immobile client in a soiled pad all night long and that was that. I'm painfully aware of how much my co-worker hated me for the rest of the week.
Not knowing what your agency's caregiver was up against when she scooted off early, I can't say she's not to blame but there are possibilities you couldn't be aware of - not that it's your problem, you've paid for the time and you're entitled to expect the service to be fulfilled properly. Just for example, she may have been given minus ten minutes to get to her next call, as I was yesterday; or she may have been bullied into taking that shift with a verbal promise that it would be fine if she left in time to get back to her family. I've agreed to overtime on condition that I don't start before 8:00 a.m. after a late shift the night before, only to be sent a round with 2 x calls, eight miles apart, starting at 8:00 and the 3rd at 9.30.
In terms of training your dragons...
Are you getting the same individuals sent to you?
Could you arrange to come home an hour early unannounced on a few occasions?
my biggest beef is that I can prove already that she lied about her clock out time at 7:55 because I had already arrived home, searched for her, and almost popped a blood vessel in my head before calling the agency at 7:55, it’s in my call log, hard proof).
i just don’t want her to ever come back here again, and I hope that they don’t fire her because she mentioned family living close and there’s like a chance of retaliation.
but more importantly, I refuse to pay for hours that I didn’t have service, and that’s why I feel very strongly about finding out when she actually left. I don’t want a one hour deduction, I want to actually know, whether it’s 30 minutes or 2 hours.
No way about peeing himself, the absorbency etc just further proves her lie and is probably a clue she left even earlier. Also left food out by his recliner, which is gross. She probably left him sitting there in front of his food and then left and he shuffled to bed. Like yogurt with separating liquid vs. the custard/curd part, must have been sitting for a few hours. There’s no urine anywhere else. I understand that he could have peed after she left but if she left at 755, the time I was already there on the phone with the agency, he would have had to have had a waterfall event. There’s also evidence he was changed at least once in the backyard trash.