Carers didnt turn up for morning call till 12.55pm.

[patsy999]

Is it worth complaining to social services about this? I have a 30 min care call in the morning and today I couldn't even have a shower as they were so late and i had an appointment at home at 1pm.
Not a single one of the carers can drive which is hopeless, as they use public transport to get to each call.
Plus, they only speak very basic English, so it's hard to communicate with them.
I'm only 55 and disabled. so goodness knows how the elderly are left.

@Dooooooooo and other carers on this thread - Thank you so much for the difficult and underappreciated work that you do.

I think care is in an impossible situation. The amount of money that the general public is prepared to pay through tax for social care is inadequate for the amount of needs that exists and is only going to grow.

Care costs are expensive to deliver and expensive to manage. The demands on care staff are huge - for a low paid job you are expected to:

Be able to drive, own a car and afford to run it (getting more expensive by the day - and you will need commuting insurance)
Keep up to date with every growing training - often in your own time
Work a difficult shift pattern that does not necessarily fit into your own life and family time
Do endless overtime that you may not want to do or that costs you in family time/childcare/travelling costs
Have excellent communication, negotiation and interpersonal skills to deal with clients who are often frightened, unwell or deteriorating in mental state
Have endless patience in the face of clients and family who may complain endlessly about trivial things or things that are not in your control
Have excellent time management - in fact if you could have a tardis or time turner so you could manipulate time that would really help
Be physically fit and robust despite the job being quite hazardous to your health in many ways
Understand complex care needs with often multiple medications and health conditions that are never fully explained to you

And yet it is apparently 'unskilled work'

I used to work in care before burning out. They may well have had an emergency that morning and couldn't convey that to you? I attended an early morning visit once and ended up having to call an ambulance that took 3 hours to arrive. The rest of my visits that morning just weren't attended as there was no one else to do them, and I found it horribly upsetting but I couldn't leave someone alone and on the floor that had had a stroke.

As a one off, I would note it. As a regular occurrence, contact the care company and say it's not acceptable.

This.

Complain, but focus on complaining about the provision, not the carers themselves. It's not their fault.

Thank you xx

I would speak to the registered manager at the care company first. They should be able to sort this so it doesn't happen again.
It's on them which staff go to which service user, not the care staff.

I’d absolutely call their office and complain. It won’t be the carers’ fault, it will undoubtedly be whoever planned their rota.

I worked in domiciliary care while I was at uni and I remember getting a phone call from the coordinator one morning asking me where I was and why I wasn’t at Mr X’s house yet as he’d called. I explained that I had been given back to back calls since 6am with no travel time in between, and it was usually at least 5-10 minutes’ drive between clients. Mr X had an 8am call and lived seven miles away from my previous client, whose call was due to finish at 8am. On a school morning. In a city.

Carers and service users are set up to fail by care coordinators who don’t seem to have any idea that carers cannot teleport several miles! I was of the opinion that my clients deserved their full calls and whatever they wanted to achieve during those calls (be that a bath or shower, hair wash, breakfast, meds) so I never rushed, and was then always late to my next calls as I had no travel time factored into my rota. We all complained about it but nothing was ever done, we just got a bollocking for being ‘late’.

I’m sorry that this is still happening and that you have fallen victim to it. Please complain or nothing will ever change

This also happened to me at 6am on Boxing Day one year. First client of the day had had a stroke in the night, the ambulance fortunately ‘only’ took about 45 minutes to arrive, but the care coordinator didn’t bother to let my other seven morning clients know that I was held up with an emergency, so I was met by each client with accusations that I was late because I was hungover (spoiler: I wasn’t!)

Please do raise it. You shouldn't be waiting till lunch time for support x

Some families can be so rude and unhelpful. I totally understand that it is hard accepting your relative needs care, and they may be struggling a lot with the pressure.
However whilst I've had many lovely, understanding and supportive families, I've had certain ones bark at me like I'm some sort of maid/skivvy, 'why has this not been done (exactly how I like it), not even a hello, just 'you're late ', or expecting me to clean up after them, not the clients, but them. No way.

If that's what's happening generally, it's appalling.

At the home where my friend works, she gives every resident under her care a shower when she's on the morning shift. It may be a very quick shower, but they get one. But I wonder, having read this, how typical that is, and how many of her colleagues aren't bothering when they're supposed to shower residents?

They also get a shower if they crap themselves. Every room has an en suite accessible shower.

Friend is incredibly diligent though, so it wouldn't surprise me if the level of care she gives is unusual. Her attitude is that she should give residents the same standard of care that she would give her own mum or dad, if they were still alive. And for that she gets £11.26 an hour, which is a few pence more than most of her colleagues. She gets the extra because she has a professional qualification of some sort, possibly from when she worked as an HCA/phlebotomist at a GP surgery.

I think it's absolutely disgusting that they are so poorly paid, and indicates utter contempt for the old and frail. And I'm very relieved that both my DPs died before they needed to go into care, although they weren't far from that point.

Indeed

I care for a lady in an ad-hoc way (when her regular carer is off or wants a holiday etc) and this is what occurs here.
I do the hours, fill in a time sheet and the local Borough pay Me for said hours.

But the choice isn't between someone who can speak English well and drive and someone who can't. The choice is often between someone with poor English and no car and no one at all. So unless you are suggesting that British people are forced into care work then many carers will be coming from abroad.

Absolutely.
The system is broken. It is due to underfunding and understaffing. Complaints are evidence of this and highlight where and why changes are needed.

My exh has carers 4 times a day supposedly to fit in with his medication schedule, often his first call doesn't turn up till 10.00am, his lunch one will turn up at 11.30am, tea at 3.30pm & bed at 6.00pm, none of which fit in with a minimum of 4 hours between medication doses. Yet he gets told off if he does his medication himself. He has also had times when they have given his bedtime medications at breakfast by mistake & he has had to go 36 hours without the strong medication he has to take for his pain, muscle spasms & sleep which left him in agony.

How bloody RUDE are you?!!

I am educated thank you very much!

its depends what type of care home your in, mine got a shower every other day and was well looked after and respected till the end.

Hi @MimiGC it was I who used the term 'by the by'. It was about the carers using buses as well as the English.

My point is there are very high staff shortages in the care sector. The days of companies specifying 'own car' are gone - they take who they can. You can't blame the carer for their situation - the company selects them.

Special thanks to everyone who voted for Brexit for making the staffing situation so much worse.

I don't need a lecture about the importance of care - I just don't think it is the fault of the individual carers. The whole system is fucked. The Tories have run it right into the ground, it wasn't great in 2010 but it was a hell of a lot better.

You’d be wrong.

I choose to work and qualify in care work leaving due to a combination of burn out, shocking shift patterns (I’ve literally done 56hrs on the trot through ‘sleep ins’ supporting night staff) and low remuneration over a decade ago. To think things are worse now is almost incomprehensible.

There are many people who ‘end up’ in care but ime they don’t last long because generally you really can’t hack it unless you’re motivated to make someone else’s life better/easier. The people who genuinely love their work and wouldn’t want to do anything else.

Complain to the care company first, then social services if no joy.

Quite. Care work is very skilled.

As bad as the situation is now, I think it's set to get a whole lot worse in the coming two decades. And as much as I blame the government/Brexit (rightly) I don't know how any government will cope with a top heavy population needing care and fewer and fewer working age people to provide it.

I would add in your local MP if you’re inclined/feel able @patsy999. This is a huge problem and so many affected are simply unable to use their voice to inform the people in the positions to influence.

Do you use a Direct payment to organise the carers yourself or do the local authority organise your package of care?

Timed calls are almost impossible to get right but this seems completely unreasonable especially if they didn't contact you to let you know they were going to be late.

Do you have a designated case worker? i would call them directly if you can

Agree, but its been like this for a few years now always plenty of jobs in care.

And still, the vast majority of posters are coming here to say "poor carers" and barely a one to have any sympathy for OP, who's alone, isolated and not receiving the care she desperately needs.

If she calls the care service, she's not making a personal complsint about the carers. She's complaining to the management of the company providing the care. And she needs to.

Seriously, it's like haven't anyone here can imagine what it's like for OP. Ffs use your imagination, have some empathy, and stop using her thread to tell her (or at least imply) that she's unreasonable to complain that she's been left unfed and untoileted from the night before until after 1pm.

It doesn't matter how bad things are for care agencies, these situations need to be logged for anyone to eventually take any notice.

As had been said by a care manager on this thread, this is a safeguarding issue. No food, no drunk, no toileting, no personal care. Who would accept that for themselves, for their child, or for a loved one?