I care for a 90 year old lady who recently fell and got a black eye from falling. After she fell I made her she was okay notified her son and granddaughter of the fall took a picture and sent it to all of them. I even sent it to the care giver coming on after me who said that everything was ok soon after that the family decided a
they wanted to fire her for stealing money the Dr has said she's a fall hazard and this caregiver has seen her fall when she doesn't get her way she'll throw herself down now that she's bee
.n terminated she's hollering abuse knowing that it wasn't. I believe the sheriff wants to convict me. and send me to jail but so far he's only taken statements the family doesn't want me to go to jail they asked me not to quit the APS lady is getting one more statement from the family tomorrow then I'll probably get arrested if they know she's a fall hazard will they look at that or does it automatically mean I did it. I supposedly was rude and yelled at her I yelled to be heard because she's deaf what do y'all think.
Are you under psychiatric care? You appear to have very high levels of anxiety. But I agree with Tx, what you need is legal-related, not aging care related. Good luck.
This is outside the scope of actually *giving care*.
I wish you well, but we cannot give legal advice.
Are you seeing your mental health provider and taking your meds?
2. You need to get honest with yourself and your psych care providers.
Your story here did not make a lot of sense, at first...If you had just been scared of an APS investigation even though you knew you had done nothing wrong and had good documentation, all the reassurances you got should have been helpful, but now it seems that you have not really been keeping your temper under control with this elderly woman. Now, Lord knows that is hard enough even if you do not have untreated or undertreated mental illness. That said, if all you actually did was yell at her once or twice, and its a first offense, and it actually goes to court, they would tend to be less interested in jailing you than in seeing that you get appropriate treatment. If the yelling was not abusive under circumstances that you can explain, well, the recording should help you and not hurt you. Earlier you indicated that the sheriff seemed to be out to get you - do you have good reason to believe that, and would he or she likely convince the court to give you maximum penalties? If you end up in jail it is not necessarily the end of the world either...but cross that bridge if and when you come to it. The husband of an office-mate of mine actually went to federal prison for nearly two years, probably for something he was not fully guilty of, but now he fully has his life back.
The reality though is that with a founded APS case on your record, you will likely need to find another line of work besides caregiving, and honestly, that might be for the best. Bottom line is that neither wishful thinking nor worrying will make this go away, and even the family being on your side, while a positive, will not be enough to shield you from all consequences if there is real evidence that you engaged in abusive treatment.
One small piece of advice that I do feel qualified to give - do NOT change your story up every time you are asked, and do not hide something you are afraid sounds bad if you really did not cause the injury, because a criterion for determining abuse is simply whether the story is consistent and can really explain the observed physical findings. I had a parent of a patient end up with a founded DCFS report once because of this - the story he made up did not fit, and all along the actual events indicated a pure accident, and for some reason he thought that they would be harder on him for an accident. I have also seen things go badly despite the facts of a case when someone was belligerent with the investigators and got in a huff because they thought they should not be investigated if they had not done anything wrong.
Get to the doctor to get the meds you need.