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My mom has had a nationally known home helper agency providing her with basic home nonmedical help for the past two years. It started out as roughly 4 hours a day, but advanced to almost continual care in November when she broke her hip. Despite my hands-on involvement, trying to build relationships with staff, and trying to maintain stability with the helpers, it seems to be a revolving door of helpers, which leads to all kinds of unpredictability and inconvenience for my mom - and me! Although tempted to hire someone privately, I prefer to stay with an agency because they can handle payroll, etc., as well as guarantee a "warm body" will show up if the scheduled helper calls in sick. My question: Can anyone recommend an agency they have had good experience with, or am I resigned to the fact that home health care is a low-paying, transient field, that all agencies are scrambling for help, and that I just have to resign myself to the fact that my mom will never have a stable team of helpers?

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FF is right, burnout factor is huge in caregiving, paid or not paid. Even in an ALF where they have teamwork, the aides get discouraged. All it takes is one complaint of wrong doing and the reply is "I'm OUTTA here."
I try to thank every aide that cares for mom and offer some appreciation. If enough people did this, more aides would stay in the field.
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Maryland, but if you ask around or check with the local homes you may find a local company near you! I found this place through the rehab mom was in, and I had very short notice to find help with dad! I like the smaller companys, they have more to lose if people are unhappy.. they were awesome and even the owner stopped by a few times to "check" on our CG and make sure we were still all content and cared for..LOL. We loved our CG. I still miss her and hope she is still available when/if Mom needs some help here I looked at the online sites, but some of the pictures turned me off.. sort of like a dating site for some of them.. I did not need my dad being taken care of by someone whose online picture had major cleavage!!
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We have had very good luck with LivHome which is a franchise as are many of these agencies. So much will depend who is running the outfit where you are located. And moving caregivers around is probably very normal. We saw some of that but the owner was very determined to have the same caregiver for my Mom if at all possible and she was a regular weekly client sam day same time the large majority of the time, I would guess 90% of the time it was the same caregiver.
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Thanks for the replies! I expect there to be some turnover, but there is almost not a week that goes by that there isn't a change - someone calls in sick, decides they don't want to do an overnight shift anymore, etc. I totally understand that "life happens" for the caregivers too. I express appreciation. I think the problem really comes from how they are treated by the agency - like chess pieces on a game board, not individuals who are trying to make the job work for them. So there is no loyalty. I also agree about the pay. But I am paying the agency roughly $25/hr, and I recognize the agency has overhead costs as well as salary costs. Please continue to share on this topic. Thanks!
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Thanks, gladimhere. I will check it out. I don't have a problem with the caregiver calling in sick, going on vacation, needing to change days. But why would a scheduler move everyone around, making the client AND caregiver unhappy and introducing more chaos and instability? Sometimes I am notified of the change, sometimes not. Seriously, I would really like to know why a scheduler would not want to keep a client's schedule intact, barring disaster. Thanks again, everyone.
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I know exactly what you mean! And once you get accustomed to someone, each new person has to be trained, causing extra stress of the family caregivers.
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The reason I can think of to move the aides around in the schedule is for efficiency. Not every day is going to have the same schedule, so you move people around to fill the needs. Maybe an aide says on Tuesday I need off in the afternoon, so they look for a placement for her for the morning hours. Just to keep her working and just to keep the clients needs filled.

We have used Home Instead and been very happy with the aides and with the management. Of course, they are locally owned, so YMMV. We lost two aides to full time positions that we were very happy with, so that was a bummer, but we understood. We used them for companionship/mommysitting and light housekeeping and have not used them for nursing care yet.
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"Not every day is going to have the same schedule, so you move people around to fill the needs. Maybe an aide says on Tuesday I need off in the afternoon, so they look for a placement for her for the morning hours. Just to keep her working and just to keep the clients needs filled."

OK, that's fine, but why not just put that person in an open slot. What good does it do to schedule her for my mom if she supposedly already has a schedule in place with her regular caregivers? It seems like an awful lot of work for the scheduler to upend multiple schedules just so a caregiver doesn't lose hours. What happened to the client's needs come first? That's what I am paying literally thousands of dollars a month for.
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Oh, I don't really know. I was just conjecturing. Probably shouldn't have even answered. I agree that it's a pain trying to make plans. And our elders do like to be able to see the same faces all the time, so I totally agree with you.
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It's me again. Sat down last Friday with the client services manager and scheduler to express my concerns and request greater communication. That lasted for about one day. My mom's schedule continues to change, and I am finding out more information from the helpers than the scheduler. So I am resigned to in all likelihood having to make a change. Last call for any other suggestions....
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