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?

Working eight hours with no break is illegal. Why isn't there a back up or system of cover for when these things happen? Given the nature of the clientele, it's not like delays are unexpected.

"Why isn't there a back up or system of cover for when these things happen? Given the nature of the clientele"

Cool. So, are you going to sign up to keeping whole days free just incase you get called in for £14 worth of work as and when someone falls?

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

Where are all these agencies that charge lots more than the going rate to provide a 5* service? I've never come across any in the 4 years I've been arranging care. All the agencies in my neck of the woods charge between £16 and £18 an hour on weekdays.

In fairness I'll do it to get my weekend free next week. I'd be rather annoyed to receive a call Sunday morning when I'm off to go to work for as little as half an hour.

It was my turn to have the emergency next weekend it may be someone else. You may also lose your break in an office.

I will tell you of my experience working for a home care company. I was an office based, Mon - Fri 9-5 care co-ordinator. This meant I was responsible for hiring staff, liasing with social services to take on care packages, matching staff to service users, and popping it all in a nice rota system.
Except that, I ended up working 6am to 10pm Monday to Sunday with a couple of hours during the day when I hopefully managed to see my son. Some weeks I went days without seeing him because I was working.
I won't go into all the details because it could fill a book, but the system is absolutely fucked.
Hospitals are under pressure with delayed discharges, which puts pressure on social workers trying to find care packages, which puts pressure on care companies trying to fulfil them, which puts pressure on the carers at the coal face.
I don't have a huge amount of sympathy for the care companies, but the costs involved are huge, and the cuts to social care mean the good carers will not stay in home care because they are working for less than minimum wage.
That job nearly broke me, and I will never get that time back with my son.
It's utterly fucked.

I didn't use agencies, Letitia.

The system needs changing, Yuck. I agree. Charge more, provide a better standard and have enough slack that you can have 'floating carers' on call for when the inevitable happens. It won't happen though as people either can't, or don't want, to pay a lot for care. Until they need it, of course...

You're taking your frustration out on the wrong person. It's not my fault the system is how it is and as I've said, I worked around it by paying privately in more than one case. Where are you in the UK? Maybe someone on here can point you in the direction of a contact, a private carer, someone they know who could help?

Nope, no, my posts are directed at the person arrongantly telling the OP they just need to chose better and pay more and that'll work "wherever you are", cause that's bollocks, you got lucky

I'm not looking for carers at the moment BTW now sure if you're reading the thread correctly?

People looking after people is the most undervalued over worked under paid profession it is diagusting how people are treated . Did anybody see the london agency bei g taken to court the other week by their staff they were being paid something like£3 an hour average i will see if i can find it.

if I paid for a 30 minute massage I would expect a 30 minute massage

No, you pay for all the set up and cool down within the 30 minutes.
So paying for thirty minutes might get you just 15/20 hands on time.
I assume the same to be true of caring.

In a 30 minute call I would be expected to gain access to the property, say hello, log in, find out what tasks I'm expected to do. Do the tasks, write my notes, have a chat, say goodbye, log out and lock up.

So it can be like a massage, there is time that isn't doing the task but you are doing the things you are employed to do

Yuck - there's clearly no point in trying to engage with you any longer. No wonder you have trouble if this is your attitude towards everything in life! I'm not arrogant for having a different life experience than you. How sad that you can't see that. But no. Your experience of the world must be the only narrative that exists, huh? How small minded of you.

To be fair, sprinklestar you are pissing into the wind here!

Anyone and everyone who has had direct experience with or as a carer is explaining the difficulties. You, from your wholly personal one-off experience have acknowledged the difficulties in getting NHS/Agency/standrad care to work.

Your wishes for carers to tell bosses to piss off are admirable, but the men and women who do such jobs are stuck in an horrendous and vicous cycle of needing the work, not wanting to rock theboat and actualy caring about their clients.

but can't you see that carers who continue to be wheels in a dodgy, mismanaged system are essentially complicit in its very existence? You really don't seem to understand, which makes that sentence the best example of victim blaming I have ever seen in an employment setting. Well done!

OurBlanche well said, thank you.

Sprinklestar: What? Yuck is simply correct in what they say about the situation in the care market. Sorry you have a problem with the reality experienced every day by the vast majority [I am in the care sector and it is just as they say], but with respect that is your problem which you might try to reflect on instead of throwing personal abuse and snide implications that it's their fault you don't get their point.

No wonder you have trouble if this is your attitude towards everything in life! I'm not arrogant for having a different life experience than you. How sad that you can't see that. But no

Wow! That's some blatent gas-lighting/inverting right there

you were the one that stated that paying more will get better care no matter where the OP is located.

Saying that that it is not the case that throwing money at it will always solve the issue of finding carers is not the same as saying that it never happens, I've acknowledged that you were lucky and never questioned whether you were telling the truth.

You're accusing me of something that you, and not me, has been doing here!

I did care work and they didn't give you travel time. But somehow they thought that you could get from one rural village to another (10 miles), in the dark in around 5 minutes. Then you'd get complaints from the next client that you are LATE!
Give the carers some slack if they have done all the jobs.

Ive been arranging care for my mum for about 15 years in two local authorities, using a variety of agencies with a steadily increasing care need. She started with wake up and put to bed calls and now has 4 visits a day with two careers each visit which is about the highest level of home care that local authorities will arrange before they strongly recommend residential care.

The best care teams were the ones directly employed by the council, the worst are tied between the one that didn't remember to pay the carers, employed some very dodgy people and went bust and the one that sent carers with very limited English and no training in safeguarding, lifting and handling or hygiene. The current agency is probably the second best we've had

In all but the council employed case carers have had routes that have them crisscrossing the borough and haven't been paid travel time.

In most cases the carers have had to phone in and phone out so clients only pay for the time that carers are there.

In all cases the carers have done the bare minimum required by the care plan e.g. they are supposed to encourage my mum to walk so ask her if she wants to, she knows they're pushed for time so says 'not today' and they can safely write 'client refused'

If you want better than this sort of standard of care then you need to spend A LOT of money, hire carers to do longer calls, hire cleaners and housekeepers.

And if you want to pay an agency their private rate rather than their local authority rate AND pay for extra time you can but you'll get the same standard of care. Or you advertise in the classifieds of The Lady and get someone with limited training to live in and cover evenings, weekends and holidays yourself

That's if you can find an agency with capacity or an individual/team - my mum was in hospital 3 months longer than medically required because there was no care agency able to take on her two-person visits.

The whole system is

Posted too soon

The whole system is shit for carers and clients

And don't get me started on district nurses - my mum's seem to be total jobsworths

And don't get me started on district nurses - my mum's seem to be total jobsworths

I'm sure there are plenty who only ever wanted to be district nurses and take their career seriously

But there are definitely some who switched to it for an "easy life" after kids or in the wind down to retirement cause of the hours.

As an ex district nurse our shifts were seven days a week, some starting at 8am, some finishing at 10pm. There were also those who covered overnight.
I'd regularly go out with over 20 visits a day, including many who were terminally ill, not all adults either. Plus travelling.
I wasn't a jobsworth, but the number of people who expected a nurse to call yet could get to the supermarket and hairdressers was astonishing.
Its now not deemed necessary for trained nurses to wash and get people up, they have 'dumped' it onto social services, as indeed district nurses have been 'dumped' with much of what doctors used to do, and far far less staff than there's ever been.
The whole car service, district nursing included, is on its knees.

*care!

It's not the workers it's the patients.
2hours a day, probably barely enough for the patient's needs, works at 14,000 a year. Paying more seems a good idea to get better staff but look what it costs. And why would anyone do such work (the fact that family don't step up for early morning and evening care suggests it is demanding and unwanted work) especially for not enough to live on. Then there's the case that care is often needed at the same time of day for most patients, plus the fact that the pay is poor and probably the jobs taken as there is nothing else on offer. You will hardly get the crime de la creme.
If the agencies were making a fortune surely we would be tripping over care workers as the owners all expanded their businesses.
I don't have an answer. If you paid someone30 an hour you could prob get a conscientious worker. Would income/ savings stretch to that? That would be. What I would try though still not easy to find someone unless you just took a kindly person on, unqualified, who needs the money.

CPtart - my mum's won't come out to replace a catheter that's come out if it's not due to be replaced - they suggest that my 85 yo frail dad put a towel under her. My mum is permanently catheterised, chair/bed bound, mostly immobile and about 18 st...

They'll only come when the GP gets involved and kicks off

If you offered me £30 an hour I'd be on your doorstep now.

Talking of cutting time even if an ill client could manage with a GP home visit we still have to call the paramedics as they come faster and then we can leave. That's how bad it is.
(For the record I've had a district nurse hand us a pile of dressings for a terminally ill client and leg it. Despite us saying we're not allowed to apply them.)