My mom and cousin hired this company three years ago. My mom has dementia and was not speaking to me at the time. I live 1800 miles away. Fast forward to November of 2019. She calls me and begs for my help. Her short term memory is gone and I could hear the fear in her voice. I told her I would help her. The first thing I did was fire that company. They knew how bad my mom was and they had my POA for financial and medical on file yet they would not communicate with me. I got no updates, schedules or invoices. The director was rude, condescending, and unprofessional from the get go. My mom kept complaining about items missing and caregivers not showing up or showing up and doing nothing. I was not allowed to talk to a caregiver at anytime unless I called her when she was with my mom. In November my cousin emailed me a years worth of schedules and invoices. Wow. What a wake up call. So many discrepancies, schedule changes, charges on my moms debit card that were fraudulent. I could go on and on. Many concerns are under investigation. It has taken me a month to figure it all out. They sent me an invoice for $650. After all my mom has been through with this company and all the BS I have had to deal with trying to manage her care, I have written a letter with dates, charges, discrepancies, schedule changes, etc. they will not answer my questions. They are sending my mom nasty letters to pay up knowing full well I pay her bills. She doesn’t have enough cognitive ability. She has been ripped off for far more than her final bill. I have written a letter laying out all the fraud, scheduling issues, etc. I am deciding whether to tell them I am not going to pay them for the reasons I just stated. My mom and I have excellent credit and I have never defaulted on any bill or loan. I don’t think they deserve anymore money from my mom. If they’d send it to collections, so be it. Has anyone ever been in this situation. What did you do?
H immediately cancelled the contract with the cleaning company. And then they dared to send a letter, noting that we had a contract with them. H got a lawyer he knows to write them an article that shut them up, which basically said that they didn't ahere to the terms of the contract. And we heard nothing again from them.
So, is there anything in the care contract that you could use as a way to deny them that payment? Something that they didn't do?
Who is doing the investigation you mention of this care company?
Early signs of dementia often include false accusations.
Was it your cousin who was managing your mother's contract with this care provider?
During those three years, did you communicate with them?
You don't think they deserve any more money from your mother... but "deserve" doesn't come into it. It's a matter of contractual obligations, and possibly money laid out on legitimate expenses. Who's investigating the suspected fraudulent transactions?
The agency writes to its client. Its client is your mother. Yes, they know that her finances are managed by the person with POA for her but nonetheless your mother is their client and it is correct business practice to address correspondence to her. If the letters are distressing to your mother, perhaps you can prevent them from reaching her - send them a change of address advice giving your mother's name, care of yourself, at your address; or, if your mother agrees, you could have all of your mother's mail redirected to your address and only forward nice letters on to her.
What event led up to your mother's crisis phone call?
This puzzles me a bit: you say you could only speak to individual caregivers while they were present in your mother's home with your mother. Well, yes. When else? To explain my puzzlement: no worker is allowed to have contact with clients outside scheduled hours or without the supervisor's knowledge. You can't have workers having undocumented conversations or visits with family members or clients. It is difficult enough keeping records without workers calling family members privately, or vice versa. And then suppose... you have a worker who is well known to a vulnerable adult, and the adult likes the worker. On the pretext that she is just making a friendly call, or that a family member asked her to pop in and check, the worker shows up at the adult's home one evening and of course is invited in - without anyone's knowledge, any record of the visit, or any idea of what the worker is up to while in the vulnerable person's home. Shudder!
And there are data protection issues, too. The agency can't give their workers' personal details out, and workers ought not to access clients' information except for directly work-related use.
But of course it is also true that agencies don't particularly want their workers rung up in the middle of a busy shift to be given an earful by an angry family member. It doesn't tend to help.
There is a lot of poor practice around, sadly, and I am sympathetic to your dissatisfactions, and it was foolish of the director not to receive your complaint constructively and address it immediately. Only do bear in mind that the agency seems to have been dealing for three years with a client with dementia - ?and a half-in, half-out cousin? - and were probably doing their best in difficult circumstances. If your mother has been the victim of theft of course you must take it further, but don't withhold from the agency any money she does actually owe them.
My cousin never wanted to be involved but constantly interjected himself whenever he felt like it. He picked the company but my mom signed the contract. He set up the ACH transactions for payment. I monitor all my moms financial matters now. I didn’t when they hired this company. He lives five hours away. He’s the type that appears to be “doing” for my mom but he makes bad choices for her. She thinks he’s awesome so I don’t say much. He thinks she doesn’t have dementia even though she has been officially diagnosed.
I tried from the very beginning to work with the director (my mom did not like her) but I needed her in my corner. I would talk to her or send emails about concerns yet she seemed disinterested. She had no credentials but claimed she was an expert on dementia. SMH.
Nothing was ever documented regarding schedule changes and no one was notified even though I asked to be. My mom would get upset about something and call the office and tell them not to talk to me so they stopped communicating with me. The next week she’d call and berate them and tell them they were fired. The director would call me and complain. This went on for months. The director told me my POA meant nothing if my mom could make decisions. Problem was my mom was getting more emotional and paranoid by the week. All this time my cousin was working against me. I won’t go into all of that but it took its toll on me and my family. I set boundaries and stepped away for four months.
When my mom called me for help I wasn’t sure what to do. She was saying checks, debit cards were missing. Several missing items from her condo haven’t been found and my cousin would tell her to look under her bed. I believed her. I visited this past December for 10 days. After a lot of detective work, filing police reports and reporting fraud to her bank, I realized these caregivers took advantage of my mom. Once I compared schedules to invoices, I found charges on her debit card that were made on days no one cared for her. I shut down everything. Her debit card and checking account. When I ordered a new debit card someone tried to swipe it and it hadn’t even had time to be activated. I could go on and on.
That’s when I hired the new company and have had zero issues. My mom has stability and the same caregiver every week. She’s beginning to trust again.
As far as talking to the caregiver, no one would answer the phone when I would call. Not even my mom. It was so frustrating.
My mom wants to stay in her home. She refuses to go into memory care or move closer to me. She can function day to day but her memory is not good. She is grateful for all that I do for her.
It makes me so angry to write this check to the previous company. I’ve never “not paid” someone for services rendered. They took advantage of my mom and shut me out so they could do what they wanted without any accountability. It’s so wrong.