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In-home healthcare is incredibly dangerous. How do you thoroughly vet your in-home employees? An in-home healthcare attendant stole my entire inheritance, court ordered checks made out to me from the death of my mother from mesothelioma, my parents’ home & my home, mutual funds & additional investments listing me as beneficiary, but the most heart wrenching above all is my mother was given 4 years to live & she was dead within 9 months. Meds can be used to mimic signs and symptoms causing incorrect diagnoses. This happens all the time. When hiring healthcare workers, there is a simple test given to weed out sociopaths. This happens during the hiring process and very normal and justifiable to the person being interviewed for a position as in-home healthcare. I’m not asking you to do that, I’m just asking how do you vet your future employees and employees you have working for you now in order to ensure safe in home healthcare?

All those items should have been locked up. The house should have been in a trust. Cameras should have been installed.
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Margie80 Sep 13, 2024
I was an in-home healthcare Professional and Caregiver than RN. Currently I am being taken care of via caregiver now due to extenuating circumstances. I was an in-home caregiver at age 16+. I would like all the help I could get if i’m a caregiver again which I will be because Family is too important. My current caregiver needs all the help he can get. I believe you do not understand the question. The ability of a stranger coming into your home and taking care of a family over an extended amount of time enables a predator to slowly, methodically and pathologically take over. A true caregiver is not a predator! This usually happens over an extended period of time. Everything was done correctly from day one as you suggested but thanks for that. I am a caregiver not a predator. It’s my nature caring for others and it comes quite easy to me. However, I would definitely need all the help I can get for in-home care because taking care of a person or patient requires individual treatment. Hopefully some of the bills being lobbied for will pass and become law to help Home Healthcare Businesses/ Owners which would give them the ability to properly screen employees.
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Remove all valuables from the home. Lock them up at your house, rent a safe deposit box, and have at least one area in the house, such as a closet, fitted with a keypad doorknob that opens with a combination. Make sure that you don’t leave the combination lying around. Lock items in this closet - valuable musical instruments, sterling silver, art objects, some jewelry. All bank accounts, investment accounts, financial information such as pension and social security accounts as well as current bills should be handled on a password protected computer. Bills are on autopay from the checking account. Don’t leave checks, debit or credit cards where caregivers have access.

These are ways to minimize theft. Most people won’t do them and then end up crying because “she stole all mom’s money.” And “I don’t know how to pay bills on a computer.” Well, you need to learn. It’s up to us to keep up with the times, be smart about taking precautions, and keep our loved ones (and ourselves) safe.
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You can hope for bills to pass, you can hire “good” people (who can still turn out to be bad). You can write letters and file police reports after the fact. But nothing takes the place of being responsible and securing information and valuables in the first place.

My LO was a stolen identity victim. We think it was because of giving out too much info on the phone. Only because I was checking accounts regularly did we discover the crime and shut it down before it got worse. Only because I could use a computer was I able to check the accounts.

Make sure the crooks aren’t smarter than you are.
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Your question and reply below is confusing for me. Were you stolen from? How was a caregiver able to get to your important papers? For someone to find my important papers, they would have to go to certain areas of my home there is jo reason thet should be in.
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From Margie50 -To AgingCare Re My Quest: Hopefully some of the bills being lobbied for will pass and become law to help Home Healthcare Businesses/Owners. This would give Home Healthcare businesses the ability to properly screen employees.
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There will be no such a "test" or way to vet anyone to predict who will rob someone and who will not. Professional financial abusers know exactly what they're doing and pick their victims carefully to give themselves the best chances of success. Sometimes the theft is a crime of opportunity, and not planned in advance, but the tempation overcame them. There is definitely a lot of elder financial abuse out there.

Having a criminal record would help, but scammers know that by time they skip town with their victim's entire lifesavings they and their family members are in such a crisis they won't have the time, energy or means to pursue them. Then the scammers go on to get privately hired by their next clueless victim and, even if a background check is done, will come up with zero.

So the incident that happened to you and your Mother... was the aid from an agency? If so, wasn't the agency liable for what happened?

Privately hiring aids is one weak link in the process because there's no higher accountability and it's more difficult to get a background check. It's a downside of privately hiring. In our family, a massive elder theft was also carried out by a privately hired, unvetted "aid" who presented stellar letters of recommendation. My cousin who hired this person did it against my advice. Unless I actually knew the aid personally prior I would never privately hire anyone.

Even when my MIL was having social workers coming in and out of her home I made sure all her private and sensitive information was completely locked away. But I was raised by a single parent daughter of poor Italian immigrants who lived in the the Bronx, so my default setting is to be suspicious of everyone no matter what.

People should not wait for laws to pass to be responsible for their own protection because it will give a false sense of security.

"Meds can be used to mimic signs and symptoms causing incorrect diagnoses."

This is a vague comment... is this what happened in your Mom's case? Who was her PoA? Did she have one? How did this theft transpire on such a large scale? Knowing the details would help us learn how to protect ourselves better.

I'm so sorry that this happened to you and your Mom. I hope you get the help you need going forward.
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The ability of anyone to perpetrate the kinds/numbers of theft and of fraud indicates someone with access not only to papers and identity, but perhaps also to the cooperation of the person they are stealing from.
Is that the case here, Margie?

As Geaton says, there is truly no way to correct for the necessity of having to have a stranger in your home with access to all of your private papers if said papers are out in the open, along with passwords, identification, cards and etc. But for someone to do what you say above it would likely require actually having got the signature and cooperation of the victim. Even people who hold solid POAs can't get access to these things without a legal struggle due to protections already in place.

You are new to Forum. I welcome you. If you completely fill out your profile we may be able to give you better answers. But there are evil thieves extant in our world, and there are people who are vulnerable. After doing all the normal things to vet caregivers (look on the internet for a list; easily found), there is little you can do but keep things very safely locked away, especially if the person being cared for is no longer completely mentally competent.

It's tragic, but predators will always find prey. We can hope for and plan the best we can. What are some suggests YOU, having been a victim, can suggest to US? Have you filed with the police/local sheriff?

Wishing you good luck.
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