To expect my parents' carers to stay with them?

[parnsipsandcaulis]

We are having a nightmare with the care my parents need. Both are elderly, frail and need assistance with their meals and with getting up in the morning and going to bed at night: so far so good.

However the carers just aren't staying. They have an hour in the morning but generally do between 40 and 50 minutes; their remaining visits should be half an hour each but the carers only stay twenty/twenty five minutes.

I've complained a number of times - AIBU about this?

They probably don't get compensated for their travel time. So they might have an hour booking but travel 20 minutes each way to see their clients. So really they've spent an hour and forty minutes on the one client. Maybe if you offered them extra compensation for the travel time they wpuld stay for the full hour?

Agree with Yuck. Pay enough and you'll get quality care and carers who work their allotted time

I think people don't understand this because they pay so much for care, but agencies take SO much of that

Carers can work NON-STOP all day and only be paid for fractions of it

and sometimes they give no consideration to routes when filling their day: you can go 7 miles west from job 1 to job 2, then job 3 is 9 miles east again! (instead of doing them in a logical row: 3:1:2, or 2:1:3) - this isn't (incase you're wondering) to suit the clients either, as they could all be "lunch" or "dinner" calls, so it actually means that the last one is unnecessarily late!

I'm a carer and I am lucky to have a really lovely employer. I am actually given time to travel between appointments so I have enough time to do everything that I need to do and have to do. Even so, I still earn less than the minimum wage by the time I have paid for my petrol in travelling. :(

I would complain to the company you are using because you should get the care you are paying for and hopefully it will put a stop to this system where a carer finishes at 1.00 pm and has to start her next call at 1.00 pm ten minutes away. It's ridiculous and very stressful.

Those saying you need to pay more are missing the point. the OP is probably paying 19 an hour to the agency. They agency are probably paying peanuts to the staff but the OP has no say in that part. I ended up having to stop using an agency for my disabled ds. We were paying a high fee and carers often were v late or didn't turn up at all. Finding a private arrangement is better but they are hard to find, plus you then become an employer and have the burden of all the paperwork, plus you are then dependent on one person. Care is a bloody nightmare. It is one of my biggest headaches tbh. In no other service where you are paying 19.00 an hour would you be expected to put up and shut up.

It's very hard to find people when what you need are two people to visit at the same time four times a day.

Also, IME these experiences often (not always) end in tears.

Been a carer. Have had managers telling me that because a client doesn't need much, I should be able make up my time after being delayed by traffic/last minute needs of previous clients. The poor treatment of carers means it's a job a lot of people are accepted for without much previous experience or good references. So you get a lot of people calling in sick or suddenly leaving, which means the other carers are pressured to pick up the slack.
And god forbid you are ill. I've been shouted at before and (when I wasn't confident enough to tell them where to shove it) made to drive when I was probably unsafe doing so, because they didn't have adequate cover for the calls. Never again.

Yes, a previous poster asked why people put up with minimum wage, bad conditions etc and I suppose the answer is
a) they need work desperately and
b) they don't put up with it, they leave, which means a very high turnover rate and carers who are new and inexperienced who themselves become jaded.

Exactly Anthony.

I'm not missing the point at all. There are dodgy companies out there but there are also good ones. Step one is to challenge the company you're using and ensure they fulfil their side of the contract. The full time or you fire them and you get a refund for the proportion of the time they've not been there. Step two is find a decent, reputable company or a private nurse who will actually work his/her hours. This is possible, as I've arranged it myself for a terminally ill relative.

Please note that I'm not having a go at people who are carers and who have hideous schedules. But the only way these are going to stop is if people refuse to work them. Make a stand (easier said than done, I know). I think it's shameful that an elderly person might have only, say, two 30 minute visits a day and rather than having a chat after making a cuppa and doing a quick wipe round, the carer can't get out of there quickly enough, scrimping on time to help their boss's profits. Thoroughly shameful.

FWIW, the district nurse teams we had alongside carers were amazing, once staying 2 hours with my relative when he'd fallen. They weren't pushed in the same way as carers though and were able to do this (in our area) without affecting the care of others. But again, that's what you get when you spread your schedule so thin there is zero slack.

The way DNs can be "amazing" and have so much time is that they [or at any rate their managers] dump a lot of calls that might a few years back have fallen on them to carers. Carers now do medical stockings, gastrostomy feeds, controlled medications and a host of other things.

Puts a whole new face on the "angels" narrative.

There's quite a simple solution OP. if you are paying privately- maybe you could pay for an extra slot so that the carer can just sit down and interact with your parents?
As someone who is connected to the field I have to say that you have little understanding of the carers position. You would expect that the carer would stay longer if something cropped up while st your parents house but oddly enough you want them to to stay and hang around once their tasks are done? Can you not see that that attitude would screw over anyone else on your carers list and the carer as well????

I used to be a part time carer at weekends. Bloody nightmare. You might have a two person visit for a shower, and the other person might have been running late, leaving you late for your other visits. Rotas never organised so that you stay in same area. You only get paid for the visits you do ( no travel time), and yeah office phoning to try and get you to fit someone else in . So we really couldnt stay our whole time. Could work 7am to 10pm with ( if you are lucky), a two hour break between lunch and tea visits. So we had to work quickly and multi task to get everything done. Exhausting job, crap wages, but I loved my clients, and always tried to fit in a chat as I might have been the only person they saw all day, but was hard

I'm a full time carer and I totally agree Susanne.... ultimately I love my job....but I'm not on minimum wage thankfully and my manager is fantastic

Spinklestar - there are not enough private carers to support the people who need care. Not everyone has enough money to pay for several hours care per day. Social care will provide v minimal funding. Direct payments are capped at around 11.00 per hour. I have had terrible trouble recruiting a carer to do a few hours a week with my disabled ds. I advertised on numerous job sites twice and found no one. Agencies charge around 19.00 an hour. How is that affordable for most people? An hour a day would make around 600.00 per month. There aren't many parents who can afford to spend that. For a disabled child we are not talking just until they are two or three years old but for the rest of their life. Many other children need much more care than this. I would imagine for elderly people who need care twice a day it is even more impossible to find someone who can provide the hours needed. Paying for two hours a day at 15.00 an hour x7 you are looking at over 800 per month. Again most ordinary people cant afford it and social care won't pay for it. They might however pay for two thirty minute visits on a block contract provided by an agency. This is not the fault of the families so I don't think you can compare it to wanting to pay Ryan air prices!

I used to be a carer and some of the time, there was absolutely no time to travel in between calls which left us with no choice but to leave a little earlier. However, quite a large number of my colleagues used to leave early just to finish their day quicker/get home earlier. I even knew one girl who arrived at a bed call at 5.30pm when the call was meant to be at 9.00pm (no exaggeration). Speak to the employers. If it is a case of no travel time then they should ensure they leave time either end of the appointment. If it's a case of carers rushing to get out of there for no other reason than time constraints then they should be called up on it.

Sprinklestar are you speaking with ANY experience at all of arranging care? doesn't sound like it!

Because in most cases it's a case of ringing round and round until you finally find one that can provide someone for the hours you need at all

There's a shortage of care providers.

It's not like the OP'll have a MASSIVE list of companies that have available staff for the times they need, and just hasnt' bothered to sift through them.

Many times when people pay for private care, they struggle to find even ONE agency with available staff that suits their needs.

I know someone who had huge problems with agencies provisionally saying they could provide care.. only for it to transpire that they didn't have anyone free now, but they didn't wanna say no to buisness, so if they could just hang on till next time they recruited then there might be someone

Went something like this:
"can you do 4times/day care, meals and settling?"
"yes we can do that, can we take your details"
"we need it to start as soon as possible, when can you start"
"if I can just take your details.."
"sure, but can you let me know when the package of care can start"
"… well we should have someone in about 8 weeks, we run monthly interviews/training.."
"so you can't do a 4 times daily package of care at the moment"
"oh no we can, it just takes a while to set up, et me take your details and…"
"do you have ANYONE on your books right now who isn't fully booked"
"no"

But "just chose the right company OP"

The person in that last example got so desperate that he took to asking anyone in a care uniform at bus stops or in the hospital they were trying to discharge his wife from if they would take on any private work and offered to pay over the going rate.

Hit a brick wall with companies, advertised for private and didn't get a nibble….

So it's just not cool to tell people they just need to "find a better company"! AS if anyone would chose a shit care company if they had any sort of real choice, it's not a buyers market when it comes to care!

We used to be given those case studies when I did this. 'Wilf is 88. Wilf has always stayed in bed with a cup of tea for ten minutes before getting up. How might Wilf feel if you insisted he gets up immediately?'

Well, I see your point, Wilf, but while you're in bed and your carers waiting for you, Alf, Joyce and Fred are in hospital desperate to come home.

Yuck - yes, I have experience, as you'd see if you read my comments properly. On top of the relative mentioned above (parent) I've also done the same for some of my grandparents. You're obviously extremely frustrated with your personal situation but that doesn't mean others haven't had different experiences. Rightly or wrongly, throwing cash at the situation has helped in each case I've dealt with. The place I did have issues was the NHS and social services - no joined up thinking, trying to send a terminally ill person home with no support in place, misdiagnosis, missed MRI scans as they 'forgot'. The list goes on and it was only when I threatened legal action with my DF's case that fast track discharge was implemented properly. We also had to battle to get any CHC funding, which came too late in the end, despite entitlement. I get that we were lucky to be able to pay way over the odds for an alternative in that case. But I'd do it again and I won't be made to feel guilty that that was what we chose to do as a family. Everyone, every industry, has their price. Pay lots more than the going rate and you'll get a decent enough carer wherever you are. The rights and wrongs of whether you should have to do this are another debate.

Please note that I'm not having a go at people who are carers and who have hideous schedules. But the only way these are going to stop is if people refuse to work them. Make a stand (easier said than done, I know). Good idea. Can you set up a GoFundMe thingy for my rent and bills please? And while you're at it, feed Doris, do Charlie's meds and sort out Bill before the complaints start rolling in?

I think it's shameful that an elderly person might have only, say, two 30 minute visits a day and rather than having a chat after making a cuppa and doing a quick wipe round, the carer can't get out of there quickly enough, scrimping on time to help their boss's profits. Thoroughly shameful. No, Carers do this because Enid is waiting for her dinner then Arthur is, literally, sitting in piss and then Annie is waiting for her medication. We cannot sit with one person to the detriment of everyone else.

the district nurse teams we had alongside carers were amazing, once staying 2 hours with my relative when he'd fallen. Carers do this too, whilst waiting for the ambulance.

Pay lots more than the going rate and you'll get a decent enough carer wherever you are

that's not true, it's just not. If you found some you were very lucky, but it's not true, there's just not enough to go around

Good private carers are usually very loyal to their clients (and their clients hang on to them for dear life) and won't even advertise until one of them dies or goes into a home. You won't even find the best ones in order to offer them more money unless you are LUCKY and they happen to be briefly re-advertising because they've "lost" a client one way or another. They don't advertise anywhere in between.

This sounds really upsetting for you carers are massively overworked they need to get to their next client on time to fit all the people in I think some care companies work them to the ground I know a few carers and they are on the trot all day with to many jobs to get to its shocking . anyway keep complaining op your parents deserve their time but it is often not the carers fault.

Anthony - carers do this because their boss tells them to. Of course they do. Their boss tells them to shave a few minutes off here and there in order to stop him or her actually employing the correct number of people for the job. I get that carers will feel a certain amount of responsibility for elderly clients who are vulnerable, but can't you see that carers who continue to be wheels in a dodgy, mismanaged system are essentially complicit in its very existence?

Yuck - I have every sympathy with you if that has been your experience. It wasn't mine though.

I agree Anthony, today I've spent an hour with one of my regulars waiting for an ambulance so I worked 8 hours with no break to catch up to catch up my run.

I couldn't afford to try and find private clients, half an hour 4 times a day and trying to fill the gaps with work that fits that could be anywhere, without my mileage allowance would mean I probably be worse off.