AgingCare 2

The assessment interaction was professional. I immediately found out that the assigned care providers are not carefully screened as promised. The initial person was sadly unfit, unhealthy and should not be working. The team immediately responded and then we started screening and filtering through many unsuitable individuals. Until we gratefully were given [name removed], [name removed]& then finally the best of all was [name removed]. The office team was always available to quickly resolve issues. And I will always appreciate the good that we experienced.

There has been inconsistency with caregivers, inexperienced on care of incontinence, turning, personal care. My father is quadriplegic and my mother is elderly. They depend on caregivers to assist with my father’s care and it causes stress on my mom due to the burden of his care and her limitations.

What we like the most about The Home Instead services is that they simply provided extra caregiving

The caregiver is wonderful. Very dependable when working along with her schedule. I never hear from the main office at all. We had one care giver who was suddenly gone and it took a week to get another one. The second one signed her paperwork at our home and had no previous training with Bright Home Health. That said, she is wonderful, but I suspect it has more to do with her than the agency. We are VERY satisfied with the caregiver, not so much the agency.

I enjoy the help I get but feel like I'm constantly training the new staff. Everyone does it their way. No best practices. No one seems to be in charge. They all say give me a minute when I need something ..never to follow back up .

The first caregiver we had seemed unsure of how to do most tasks without direction. She didn't know how to cook or even slice a banana, and she once tested the temperature of the oatmeal with her finger-which was not okay. The second caregiver was an improvement, but both were quite young and inexperienced. Their manager, on the other hand, was excellent-she clearly knew what she was doing. If she had been our regular caregiver, we likely would have stayed with the company. We've since found an independent caregiver through [removed] who is fantastic and has many years of experience.

They struggle to staff consistently. Staff they had were unreliable after about a month.

Accommodated us with early hours we wanted. Found someone right away. Yes, we would recommend Home Instead to other families based on the experience so far.

They had a lot of help available. Yes, we would recommend Supplemental Support Care Services LLC to other families based on the experience so far.

1. Such a service is needed because they pre-screen the caregivers, cover liability, support pop-ups (e.g. provide last minute replacements), and handle all the quarterly employee taxes and withholding. 2. But customers must take care to explicitly set requirements (e.g. "Non-smokers", "No perfumes", "housekeeping duties", "personal care duties", "pets present" or "pet allergies", "cleaner allergies" such as patient allergy to PineSol, and "family/kids will be present during hours". 3. Before committing, clarify any flexibility needs, for example: A. Ability to come home early and end the day (? 2 hrs short). B. Flexibility to cancel days with limited notice (such as staying home when it rains or if patient has a doctor appointment). 4. Clarify exactly what circumstances require overtime pay (e.g. 48 hrs for single worker includes 8hrs @ time and a half, but two 24-hr workers in a split shift does not). 5. Time is recorded to .25hr in combination with both proximity arrive/leave and worker's phone app check-in/out. Sometimes there can be a discrepancy as to when the caregiver actually started/stopped. Recommend keeping a logbook with times. 6. If a caregiver is unsatisfactory for whatever reason, communicate that before it becomes a bigger issue; likewise, be sure to report exceptional services.

I was very hopeful after talking to the owner/manager of the company. And was able to start within days of my request, The worker assigned to me was friendly and I blocked forward to working with her, but she was more interested in talking than working I wanted companionship too but I needed light housekeeping and food prep as well. I got the rundown of how the company was mismanaged and didn't care about its employees etc. I notified the owner and he said he would talk to her, but that made her mad so I terminated the service

Home Again is very friendly, responsive and reliable. The quality of the caregivers sent is not impressive. I felt very happy with 2 of them. The rest were not impressive.

They came through for me at a critical time, so grateful for that. The staff was nice, but only 1 was really engaging. Scheduling was easy, but important to reconfirm dates and times. 4 hour minimum. Hourly rate was high for the service level provided.

It was frustrating that the staff can't "force" anyone to do anything. My mom has dementia and doesn't want to get out of bed most mornings, claiming she already ate breakfast in the cafeteria. But we needed a caregiver who would help Mom get up and moving and eat something so she could take insulin and manage blood sugar. Since the caregiver wouldn't do that, Mom tanked pretty quickly and ended up in the hospital, then the nursing home. So even though everyone was fantastically friendly, our experience wasn't great. Also, it's really expensive to have someone there who didn't do what we needed done.

Staff on intake seemed very conversational, amenable, eager to with us. The care receiver seemed to enjoy staff presence and work. Only in attempting to secure their services a second time were we made aware that there were two concerns (one in-residence, and one personal/hygienic) that "prevented" them from serving us again. I was rather shocked to learn that these issues had not been communicated to either care receiver or myself during or after the care received.

Staff not always trained for the type of patients they are working with and did not always do the cleaning they were asked to do.

You pay more for the same service you'd get at half price. I would not recommend.

If you need consistency, and verbal interaction this is not the team. There is a lot of changes for senior citizen with any type of memory challenges. There needs to be consideration for elderly woman, bathing is an private matter and they like to know who, not change a lot. Or you have uniformed staff to identify the person, I. D. something that indicates safety or quality of care.

The office staff seems fine on the phone. They just can't seem to get regular people. With dementia people having new people just makes them that much more confused. I let the office people know I need consistent people but they don't seem to try to hard at that. They will call my regular 1 person I have to try and work somewhere else which would take away from me. We have just been discussing changing companys.

I liked that they would provide a replacement if the caregiver scheduled had to miss. A few times, there were no- shows, so perhaps screen caregivers better. On the whole, caregivers were responsive to my dads needs, and communicative with us as well. Administrative staff was very responsive