AIBU to not want her back in my home?

[Bowrito]

This is long winded but I don’t want to drip feed.
We have Carers that come each morning, 6 days a week to help me get my son ready for school. He is non mobile, non verbal but the loveliest boy who unfortunately needs quite a lot of care. The Carers are a small team of 3 that are rostered by an agency and only one a day is needed as I do most of the care myself.

This week my DS was sick and out of school so I cancelled his Carers from Monday-Thursday. He was sleeping in and I didn’t want to wake him at 7 if he was unwell. By Thursday he was better.

Thursday evening I had 2 missed calls from a number I didn’t know which I didn’t answer. Then a message from one of his Carers asking if she was needed on Friday. I replied straight away saying he was much better and would probably be going to school but that I couldn’t 100% say until the morning, that she could leave coming in and I would email the agency. If I do the canceling the Carers are still paid for their time.

On Friday morning this lady arrived at 7.30 when I was dressing my son in the living room and I smiled and said I hadn’t expected her as I’d replied she didn’t need to come in. She had such a bad attitude saying I had told her to come in, I asked her to read her texts again. When she did she said she had misunderstood and in future to be clearer. She asked if my DS was going to school, signed her agency attendance book and left! I read her note and it said ‘mother asked me to leave’ I did not. Throughout the brief conversation I was smiling as my son was there and I was in great form as he was better.

But now I’m pissed off, AIBU to be?

I don’t want someone in my home with an attitude.
If you’re rostered to do a job, come in and do it - don’t be texting me hoping for a morning off.
She should have gone through the agency to ask for the morning off and not me directly.
She was also 30 minutes late if she had thought she was due in.
She saw me struggling to dress my DS but didn’t help just walked out in a huff.
But I’m mostly annoyed that she didn’t interact with my DS. He doesn’t know she’s a carer he thinks she’s his friend. She said hi to him but that was all she was too busy arguing with me.

Do I give her another chance or has a line been crossed now and she will always be rude to me?

Mind, not kind. Damn pt.

Do I guess you and I are Midlanders?

I understand what “You can leave coming in” means but I can well understand that someone outside the Midlands wouldn't have the first clue whether that means come in or don't.

I’m from the Midlands and I did wonder that myself! As I understood that ‘leave coming in’ means don’t come in. Maybe it is a regional thing?

However, the confusion for me lies in the fact the OP told the carer not to come in because she wasn’t 100% certain her DS would still be well enough to go to school. She told the carer to “leave coming in and she’d email the agency”. To me that says “don’t come in and I’ll email the agency to confirm you don’t need to come in”.

What I don’t understand is if you did in fact need her and didn’t contact the agency to cancel because you did need her - why even bother saying “oh I wasn’t expecting you - re-read your texts where I said not to come in”?

If you needed her after all, why even say anything? And if you hadn’t emailed the agency after all because you did in fact need her, then why wouldn’t you be expecting her to come in? It was the fact you said “I didn’t expect you in”, when you clearly did expect her to be in that probably frustrated her. She’s not going to stand and help you when you’ve just told her “i said I didn’t need you in”. So she did what most of us would do and left.

It’s nice that she apologised to you for being a bit huffy (although can’t blame her), but I do think you should apologise for the confusion you caused.

You basically told her she didn't have to come
You basically indicated to thr agency by not cancelling she did indeed need to come
You told her when she arrived she didn't need to come

This ^^

No wonder she was confused and frustrated.

Also I do think you need to advise her not to contact you directly in future and to take all communications through the agency.

She may have been trying to be proactive, but you didn’t give your number out to her so she didn’t have any authorisation to contact you directly.

Glad it’s sorted and you can put it behind you. I also think you still need to tell her not to contact you directly in the future so this can’t happen again.

Thumbs down to the agency for overworking their staff though!

I think that you should feel comfortable with the peoole who come into your home and help you take care of your child. Emphasis on 'your child'. I have a disabled son who is also receiving support from paid carers. I have also worked as a carer. It is outrageous that some posts are advocating tolerating this person. It is never acceptable to be short or rude to the family of a client. It does not matter how much professional carers get paid or how many people they see. It is unprofessional for the carer, an agency worker to contact you directly unless this has been agreed upon. This is not a relation or family friend. This person gets paid to provide a service
You are within your rights to report this person. The fact she has written in your son's record and said you asked her to leave is strange. These records are legal documents. Normally you would clarify why the client has asked you to leave, if the entry was legitimate she would have written more. You are the client as far as the contract sytands, you have every right the stop someone coming to your home you do not feel comfortable with. They are supposed to be nice to you, and saying you were smiling at this person so what she was unprofessional towards you in your own home. Outrageous. She is the one blurring professional boundaries.

This carer is not a child. She gets paid. ...

browneyes77 I am not from the Midlands and understand what the word leave means in this context.
Also stop defending the carer (re other posts). This person owes a duty of care to the family, not the other way around. If you went to hospital and the nurse was rude etc to you, would you be expected to make it up to the nurse? Would expect the nurse to tell you how ill she ill or tired etc.No. There is no difference at all. Is the OP, on top of caring for a severly disabled child, supposed to take into account the carers problems? No. OP has enough to deal with.

The phrasing she could leave coming in would sound confusing to me. wasthat your exact wording? You pretty much did tell her to leave when you said she shouldn't have been there. You also said you weren't expecting her to come. Good help is hard to find. I'd hold on to her if she's good at her job.

Sure. But that's why OP needs to make her own life easier by communicating clearly and consistently via the agency, to avoid getting into this sort of unnecessary energy-sapping pickle again.

If I made a hospital appointment, then told the HCP that maybe I didn't need the appointment, I'd let them know, then didn't, then got cross when they'd kept the appointment open for me, and told them I didn't need them...

I suppose telling to leave it might be perceived as leave. Especially if person's first language is not English. However, I think disabled children deserve a carer with good communication skills, at the very least.

@Bignosenobum it's not the carer with bad communication skills, it's the Mum!

'You can leave coming in' isn't very well structured and if English was a second language I can understand the confusion (it's my first language and took me a minute to understand that). Also may be so that her mother language is just more blunt (eg my German friends sound almost rude when learning English as they almost directly translate and German is brusque) and so the 'mother told me to leave' wasn't meant rudely but that she'd genuinely thought you were telling her to leave.