Carers Ignoring Their Clients When and About.

[RisingSunn]

In the last 6 months I would say. Whenever I see carers assisting/taking their clients out. They have ear buds in - watching their phones/on phone calls. Completely ignoring the client - the client is just sitting there.

Like - no interaction at all - and to be honest it upsets me a little bit when I se it.

Are carer duties limited to ensuring the client is clean/safe - and I'm judging unfairly?

That sounds really poor. And maybe the carers you see aren't suited to the job and fed up of crap pay, awful hours, rubbish managers, or whatever.

But - the carer could be with the client, 1-to-1, for 50 + hours a week. The client could be pretty bored of the carer by then, and prefer to people watch or whatever. It's difficult enough to find decent carers, add in the desire for a good carer whose company you'd enjoy all day every day.

I am not going to judge people for doing a job that I would never do. As long as they are not being actively cruel. I also think if the disabled person is up to interaction there would be some. If I were in a wheelchair and my carer was ignoring me I'd tell them to get off their phone!

Them possibly being together 50+ hours a week is a good point.

It's just the simple things, like when the carer arrived with their food - she just placed it in front of the client. No 'Here you are' or 'There you go'. Just put on the table and continued scrolling.

I know it's not actively cruel as previous poster mentioned. Just sits wrong with me.

If they are definitely carers then they shouldn't even have their phone visible. It is a tough and difficult job, sometimes the client doesn't want to communicate or a simple sentence can trigger language you'd rather not trigger. But, for most agencies etc there are strict rules about phones and phone use.

I'm sure that there are good ones but I've also seen some stuff that's not great. Like there were two disabled adults that had carers that I think were supposed to be taking them to a cafe. They just sent them through the door and fucked off, the two adults didn't seem able to talk a lot or communicate with the cafe staff and ended up being removed by the manager, really uncomfortable to watch.

You absolutely sure they were scrolling and not writing the copious amount of notes required?

Yeah this. We write notes on a dedicated device that looks like a phone but isn’t. Writing up incidents in particular take ages but have to be done because they are important evidence to support the amount of care a client gets.

I have one client who regularly has 8+ incidents to write up over a 12 hour shift. That has to be done when we can manage it.

I would have been letting that manager know, that his behaviour was unacceptable. Not just sat there silently.

The client might just prefer to sit there. You just got a small snapshot of their day. They might have been having a lot of interaction when they were not in your view.

I saw a man with his carer in a pub. The carer was on his phone, but the man was eating his lunch and probably didn't want to be disturbed.

I don't think the staff in the cafe knew what to do. I don't know what I would have done, I've never managed a cafe, so didn't feel that it was my place to give anyone a lecture. The carers should have stayed with their clients and supported them to find a table and order what they wanted as this wasn't something that they could do for themselves.

Yes the carer should have stayed, true. Speaking up, when seeing something wrong, does not have to involve giving a lecture though.

What good would it have done? I wouldn't have known what to do either. Why would the manager have cared for my opinion? If I'd known the carer agency I would have sent a message about what had happened.

But it might be in those clients care plan that they needed to do that activity independently. The people I work with have very significant needs but we encourage as much independence as possible and sometimes it doesn’t work but it has to be shown not to work if that makes sense. So it can be documented and revised and improved on.

From what I could see these two individuals couldn't communicate verbally and then started getting agitated, perhaps because they couldn't communicate what they wanted. There was no one there to document anything, the carers had left.

I work as a PA/carer and honestly I’ve seen what you are talking about but there are also situations or set ups where I have clients for example that want me to take them out but don’t wish to communicate much and much prefer me to go on my phone or sit away from them when at a coffee shop for example as they can’t drive or use public transport and to go out somewhere and be with their thoughts or wife/friend/husband is what’s preferred not having to talk to me because I’m there. It’s helping someone live their life to fullest and sometimes that can be taking a back seat and for others it’s a lifeline to have that communication. So from one interaction you’ve seen you don’t know the whole picture.

I think it's difficult. When I visit my Father who has dementia, we have a "conversation" for less than an hour. I do a bit of a monologue of "the news" and sometimes ask questions. He answers different questions and does a monologue entirely unconnected with mine. I recognise the words he is speaking but I have no idea what he is talking about. It is entirely removed from reality and very tiring. I've usually run out of "news" (and patience) after 30-40 mins and suggest we listen to some music (in companionable silence). I wouldn't blame a carer for looking at their phone. You have to preserve your sanity.

Again you don’t know. I sometimes look like I am ignoring the person I am with but the reality is I know exactly what is going on.

and tbh if the client has capacity and has insisted on going into somewhere alone the carer has no right to prevent them as that would be a deprivation of liberty.

you saw a snapshot. You don’t know what discussions and decisions were made before that activity.

however I think you want to think the worst of carers 🤷‍♀️ and as I’ve just got home from a 12 hour shift with very challenging clients and have another one tomorrow I’ll leave you to your opinions and I’ll go to sleep 😊

Unless they had hidden cameras I don't see how the carers could have known what was going on once they'd disappeared. I'm sure there are good carers but I don't think they were.

Perhaps these two clients have days where they function differently and that day was just one day where they couldn't communicate with the cafe staff but they can on other days.

To a poster that said these are snapshots. They are - but I keep seeing the same snapshot.

One a different day - a carer was with her client - having a full blown conversation/laugh with a friend and the client was just sat there.

I'm sure there are many great carers - I guess I'm coming across more of those that appear to just need a job. And I think it takes a special type of person to do this job well. (Which should be reflected in their pay).