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?
As for recommendations, it would be difficult to recommend an agency as this website goes worldwide... what is able in one's part of the world or even here in the States, might not be available in your city.
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.
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.
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.