How difficult is it to find a good home health aide?

I don't think I would have gotten the number of detailed answers if I just wrote "I am an aide, etc"

I was a nanny and ive met people like you you want it all your dad cared for and the house cleaned for a miserable 50 dollars a night?

I made it very clear to my employers that either i take very good care of your baby and do very little housework OR i do all your housework and neglect your baby? do you really need a reality check if i hired a carer and my house was spic and span i would have to ask the question of how well my dad was being cared for? I think your dad needs to be in a home and looked after by professionals not some immigrants who just want a job and will work for peanuts pay peanuts and get monkeys. Your dads care should be paramount and if you cant afford proper care then either care for him yourself or have him get the care he deserves in a professional enviroment.
Here in Ireland its $150 dollars a night for cargivers for als patients and well deserved if you ask me! Maybe you should spend sometime with these cargivers even for one day to see just how hard it is and maybe you wont be so cheap!

Kazzaa, he's not the son of the man in question as he claimed in most of his posts.

He only pretended to be to get answers. He's the aide, and had his own agenda in disguising his identity.

As a person needing in home health care, which will be paid for by the Veterans Administration, do I have the right to stipulate that I want a female helper who is height and weight proportionate, according to doctor charts, and who is from 18 to 35?

Those kinds of stipulations would set off an alarm if I were working in the agency you contacted. If I were a private caregiver, I wouldn't even consider working for you. Anyone who sets those kinds of standards is giving off a clear message.

Why do you feel "height and weight proportionate" is required, and why the age requirement?

Your profile states you're caring for someone with arthritis; how is this affected by someone who would meet your standards, which I consider to be especially rigid in the age category.

And depending on how the VA structures payment, if you're considered the employer, your standards are discriminatory.

Is the home health care for you or for someone else? If for you, I think an agency would think seriously about even finding someone.

Those kinds of stipulations would set off an alarm if I were working in the agency you contacted. If I were a private caregiver, I wouldn't even consider working for you. Anyone who sets those kinds of standards is giving off a clear message.
Why do you feel "height and weight proportionate" is required, and why the age requirement?
Your profile states you're caring for someone with arthritis; how is this affected by someone who would meet your standards, which I consider to be especially rigid in the age category.
And depending on how the VA structures payment, if you're considered the employer, your standards are discriminatory.

So far the agencies have sent me a 45 year old woman who couldn't hear me standing next to me. Then they sent an 80 year old woman. I'm seventy. The eighty year old almost passed out because it was 93 degrees in my home. I don't have central air right now. She told me she couldn't come back because it was to hot. I agreed with her. Then they sent a woman who was close to five hundred pounds. She was the most disgusting looking person I had ever been that close to. She was barely able to navigate her way through my home It has narrow walkways and is cluttered with furniture, chairs, and other stuff. I was afraid she would stumble, hurting herself and destroying things in my home. I refused all three of them. The agency tells me that they are the only ones available because everyone else in on vacation. I am very clear of mind, but I have arthritis among other ailments, and can't walk well, or stoop and bend. That's why I am asking for someone whose height and weight is proportionate according to the charts in the doctors office. Why would anyone other than morbidly obese people, old, people, or deaf people have a problem with my simple requests?

I'm finding it implausible that an agency would send out someone who's 80 years old and someone who weighed 500 pounds, and am in fact wondering how someone of that weight would even be able to get to your house.

I think there's more going on here but I don't know what it is. Maybe the agency for some reason doesn't want to deal with you. Maybe the agency isn't a very good one.

Perhaps you should try a different agency. That's what I would do.

Few more thoughts - the issue of no a/c, 93 degrees, and clutter. Whoever was the first proposed aide might have reported to the agency that the working environment wasn't tolerable, and the agency really doesn't want the assignment.

Hello am I still online?

As a person needing in home health care, which will be paid for by the Veterans Administration, do I have the right to stipulate that I want a female helper who is height and weight proportionate, according to doctor charts, and who is from 18 to 35?

Asked and answered.

Are you having trouble keeping an Internet connection?

Jacobstein 1950, I truly understand your need to keep a close eye on the aides, I feel the same way. But, if you call and interrogate every two hours you are going to alienate and anger the aides and your parent will suffer from an unhappy aide or turnover. You might want to consider cameras, which will allow you to monitor on your cell phone how things are during the day or night with your parent. They have Granny-Cams and many other camera systems that are geared toward this kind of thing. The other thing is what you may consider spic and span may not be someone else's idea of cleanliness. The most aides are expected to do is light housekeeping and even that is subject to interpretation. My goal is cleanliness in the bathroom, the bed and no food left out or gunk in the kitchen. You may have to periodically clean the house yourself or hire someone every so often.

Trying, did you read the prior posts? Jacobstein was a fake; he admitted he wasn't who he claimed to be. Don't waste your time on this thread - it's a ploy to lure people into responding to fictitious claims.