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onlydaughter39 Asked November 2019

Issues with private pay caregivers taking over in our family home!

We hired a husband/wife in 2018 to help at my Dad's home. Dad's drivers license medically suspended after minor car accident. Dad has cognitive decline & dementia (mid stage now) & lives in home I grew up in. My Mom passed 2016 after 8 HEARTWRENCHING years of dementia. The husband asked to cut grass & do maintenance. He's great in Summer when tons to do outside. Over Winter I wanted accountability for the 24/hrs week he was paid. His wife was brought onboard (by my older brother who is POA) months later to help oversee other female caregiver helping on their days off. I set up EVERY detail about Dad's care, house projects, etc. I live 1 hr from Dad & went down EVERY wkend for 8 months until I was burnt out, mostly from being SO agitated at my 2 brothers (1 older who lives 8 hrs away and 1 younger who lives 1 hr away near me) At that point, they were not seeing my distress & I felt my only option was to say "I'm done" to get them to engage. So, they pulled the rug out from under me & starting removing me from my Dad's care & all the communication about what was happening at the house. It's important that you know that ALL I WANTED was for them to pitch in more as I was doing TOO MUCH!! I am a classic middle child, very detailed & proactive! After a few months of trying to focus on myself again I continued to feel compelled to care for my Dad & slowly started getting involved with details at the house again. All the while, being told that I should not give any direction to the caregivers or interfere with what they were doing. What has followed in the months since is I feel this couple has crossed a line & taken control of our family home in a way that makes me uncomfortable to visit my Dad. The wife does all kinds of passive/aggressive stuff towards me. She moves things that I have in special places, they have said that if I come back, they will leave. All the details I set up, she slowly started to change, I feel she's always trying to one-up me, she takes papers home that should be left at house, I found out she was monitoring when I called my Dad, and from another room she actually took her phone & recorded the audio of my Dad talking w/me. I am very territorial of my family home & believe there is a boundary you just DO NOT cross when you work in someone's home & she has crossed it! With my brothers approval they hired a new caregiver a few months ago who just weeks into working at the house was caught on camera folding up an envelope that had my Dad's return address on it & shoving it down her shirt (right infront of security camera that she knew was there )& we found out she had made letterhead of it & had written a letter lying that she had worked at the house for 9 mos when she had only been there 2. Isn't that FRAUD?!I called my Dad's lawyer who actually said, "at this time, I don't see that as grounds for termination" ARE YOU KIDDING ME! I wanted to fire her *ss but both my brothers wanted to forgive her & keep her. I asked them if we had someone better in the wings to replace her would they fire her...they both said yes, YET, keeping her was easiest thing for them to do. TOTALLY unacceptable but what was I going to do?? So I've been monitoring the cameras for the past months which allows me to see issues w/caregivers but most importantly have eyes on my Dad who's home alone 14hrs/night. He's declining & it's vital to watch him closely to know when overnite care is needed & gain insight to share with his various docs. One night, I happened to check the cameras & the carbon monoxide alarm had gone off & I alerted my brothers & called the fire dept (who told us that if we hadn't noticed this our Dad would have been dead by morning. Husband/wife again saythey don't like my oversight & will quit if it continues. My brothers called today & want to remove cameras....NEED ADVICE!

Geaton777 Nov 2019
I do agree with WorriedinCali about not having it both ways. IMO I think a solution is to hire an agency, so that the people are vetted, background checked and easily fireable and replaceable. I realize people use privates for cost reasons, but you get what you pay for. In my family's experience a very "lovely and caring" private caregiver coerced her vulnerable charge to change the PoA, the will, sign over his house and even took his dog. There is always this risk from privates and you literally will not be able to tell who the predators are. I truly hope your family can come to a harmonious agreement on his care.

lealonnie1 Nov 2019
Forgive my apparent ignorance, but why do you need 'grounds' for terminating this care-giving arrangement?? You already have proof of fraudulent behavior on camera, isn't that enough? If your siblings find no issue with allowing your father to die of carbon monoxide poisoning, it would appear you have an even bigger issue with THEM than the care givers! Who decides to remove cameras from an elderly parents home AFTER they've proven to save his life?? Makes no sense whatsoever.

It sounds like it's past time for a real heart to heart talk with your brothers now to determine what's best for your FATHER. If they don't want you involved in his care at all, I don't know how they'd be able to prevent you from visiting him, short of getting a restraining order against you, assuming they (or one of them) holds the POAs for your dad.

What a sad situation when the entire family is not on the same page where Dad's welfare is concerned! I'm so sorry you're dealing with such a worrisome situation and I hope you can get things straightened out soon.

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worriedinCali Nov 2019
I’m going to be blunt. What you do is stop trying to take control again. You told your brothers you were done and they took at your word and took over. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be done and expect them to take over and then waltz back in and try to take over. I think you need to sit down with your brother the POA and discuss everything and determine what everyone’s roll & level of involvement will be. Your brothers hired caregivers and you are trying to undermine them and take control. You can’t just do that and expect everything to be hunky dory. You just can’t. What i’ve Gathered from all of this is that your brothers are unhappy with your uh..meddling, trying to take control of dads care after you told them you were done. So you all need to sit down and have a discussion. Did you actually discuss the seriousness of the theft and the carbon monoxide detectors?

If you want to take control then you’ll probably have to pursue guardianship since your dad has mid stage dementia.

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