Care home gossip dilema.

[Lemondoughnut]

Sorry 'dilemma'. We recently had a lot of work carried out on our house and one of the tradespeople was absolutely dreadful. The rest were brilliant, luckily. This particular one never turned up and when he did, would just go home if he couldn't park directly outside. Workmanship was shoddy and he made constant errors resulting in flooding, twice!
We refused to pay the last installment of his invoice until he had finished the job, but did so when he completed everything. Some of it still isn't right but we'd just had enough.
His DP has now come to work in the care home where my mother is a resident and I have been told by 2 of the other carers that she is saying to anyone who listens that we were a nightmare to work for and refused to pay him etc etc. She also said he is brilliant at his job and never had complaints before but two of the other tradespeople told me they avoid using him as they're aware of how dreadful he is. I get the impression that the two people who told me this were holding back in repeating exactly the full extent of what's been said.
She is close friends with many of the carers who look after my mum and this has made me very uncomfortable.
AIBU to be furious about this and should I address this in some way?

I'm not sure what you can do to be honest.
She's not breaching any confidentiality in respect of her employment, ie caring for your mum.
The only thing that would be a concern would be if she were to treat your mum differently because of this. Maybe alert the manager to keep an eye on things?

speak to the manager about the concerns you have for your mum as she's your priorty
as for the gossip ignore it . people will make their own up on weather she's telling the whole truth

Speak to the manager, both to make sure your mum is okay, and to make sure that he is not hired to do any work there. If I heard this though I would guess that he was rubbish at his job.

I don't think you can control what people say to their friends and colleagues.

Maybe you grumbled about this terrible contractor to your own friends and colleagues at the time.

Of course she will believe and support her husband, and have a very dim view of you.

But IME people listen but do not blindly believe gossip. If you are pleasant when you visit the care home and bills are paid on time, most staff will take it with a pinch of salt and ignore her.

She is not being very professional and I would report her to management and Ofsted,( Care Commision in Scotland)if you don't get any help. Completely inappropriate way to behalf gossiping about a resident's family.She should keep her personal issues to herself.

I would definitely mention it to the manager as it is unprofessional and does not reflect well on the home of the staff gossip about the families

She is being incredibly unprofessional and I would be arranging a meeting with her manager. I would advise them that you are very unhappy with what has been said and that you are concerned that if a staff member can be so unprofessional it will affect the care that your Mother receives. Any decent manager would nip it in the bud there and then, if not report to CQC.

It's not Ofsted. It's CQC England and Care Inspectorate Scotland.

I think first steps would be a quiet word with the manager. Has the carer seen you visiting and made the connection? It feels as though it's all a bit gossipy and hearsay. Have other carers told you about conversations or has your mum heard them directly? These things can usually be shut down by a good manager. If not then follow the homes complaint process.

The point here is that this carer is not just chatting idly to her colleagues about some “nightmare clients” her partner had to deal with.

She has brought this subject up because she knows that one of the residents in her care is related to these “nightmare clients”. Therefore, her gossip is indirectly criticising the resident and directly criticising the resident’s family. This feels very wrong to me and I’d be concerned that it does affect her attitude to your mother, not in any way that is likely to put your mother in physical danger, but an overall lack of warmth.

That the colleagues might believe you were bad clients is not really a big deal, doubt they’d care enough to treat your Mum differently.

in your shoes I’d consider asking for a meeting with the manager to raise my concerns, but you would have to be ready for a massive backlash as the woman already dislikes you and will see this as a continuation of your unreasonableness/victimisation of her family. If the manager could stamp it out without revealing you’d complained that might work.

Definitely speak to the manager. It's really unprofessional to slag off a resident's family like this. It would be wrong even if what she was saying was true, but the fact that it's not makes it even worse.

Although it would be more fun to challenge her directly in front of her colleagues, and tell her that her DP's a lazy slacker whose workmanship is dreadful, and that he's lying to her because he was paid in full when he finally finished the work ...

Yes, these are all my feelings and concerns.
My mum is 100 and has dementia. She is totally helpless and I'm with her everyday for 4/5 hours so all the staff know me well. I've felt that some have been a bit frosty but not sure if I'm imagining it. They have hard jobs and it may have just been a tough day.
I don't want to make matters worse by raising it and, as you say, increasing her belief of 'victimisation'.
There's a large clique of more mature carers, of which she is one and this includes her family members, so it's a lot of people who could be less than warm with Mum as a result.
I haven't told my DP because he was at his wit's end with the whole situation and I don't want him to act on it by contacting the dodgy workman until I decide the best course of action. My only concern is for my mum.

Tbh if I heard this I'd think the same too so not concerned about my reputation, only about the impact on mum.

Best of luck to you and your Mum, I know it must be difficult with dementia and physical frailty but how wonderful that she has reached such an old age.

We had a situation a few years ago where one staff member was doing similar about another. That staff member decided to stay professional and say nothing and let their hard work, drive and commitment speak for itself. It all blew over peaceably.

Having a spat makes everyone look bad.

I agree and I definitely grumbled about him to friends as I was in tears most days.
My mum sleeps a lot so I spend a lot of time with other residents who don't have visitors and the carers are very grateful for this so my relationships are, or have been, very good there.

She made the connection because her DP told her who I was, my name etc and then if she sees me chatting to anyone she then approaches them and says " you know that woman you were talking to.......

Lol. This was my first thought but then I took a breath to consider the fallout.

Thank you. It is a grand old age but with no quality of life not sure I'd want to get there.

I think you sound lovely. I imagine the care staff really like you. They'll listen to what she says but it won't tally up with what they already know about you. I think the gossip will be more damaging for her actually. I would listen and wonder if he was a cowboy. To be honest, I'd make it my mission to be extra charming to her!

He's probably done this deliberately to out out his version of events before you can put yours out. You've had some great advice on here.

So funny you said this.
I've just arrived and when I saw her I said 'oh hi, how are you today?'.
I even managed to smile, a bit.
On balance I think I'll take the least said, soonest mended approach. But keep an extra eye.
Thank you for your advice.

As someone who has previously worked in care homes, yes, speak to the Manager. Say politely that she has been telling lies about you & your husband and you are not comfortable with her caring directly for your mother.

You can't stop her speaking but you can stop her being rota'd directly in charge of your mum's care. Especially if it's a large home with more than one section. She won't obviously lose her job, or even get into trouble (apart from hopefully a reminder not to publicly badmouth residents' families).

The issue is, she's the cleaner but her chums are the carers. So she will be in and out of mum's room.
Having taken in all the advice here, I've decided it's probably best to do or say nothing.
She's had her say and it'll all be forgotten about more quickly if a fuss isn't made.
That said, if I see/hear anything else a meeting with the manager will be first priority.