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Discouraged Finding Caregivers
I’m fortunate to have a skeleton crew of caregivers to remain living independently. However I’ve been passively trying to find coverage for the alternating weekends that I now spend at Mom’s. Since she’s getting older, don’t tell her I said that, and winter is approaching I thought it would be a good idea. After three no call, no show interviews I’m getting discouraged. Why set up an interview if you’re not going to show up? Is it a generational thing? Last time I requested they please let me know if they needed to reschedule or cancel. That bit me in the butt as they rescheduled three times! The third time I said it was the last time I’d reschedule. After all that they didn’t show. Do you have better luck finding caregivers?
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3 Replies
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I interview people on Zoom now. Then if they don’t turn up I can do other things until the next person is scheduled.
I try to talk them out of it: “Are you sure you want to come all this way for a 2-hour shift?” “Even in the winter?” This gives them the opportunity to self-select out so we won’t waste each other’s time.
I don’t get many no-shows anymore, but fewer people answer my ad: The government was giving $200/week to help people who lost work because of COVID – if they were laid off or if they decided to stay home and self-isolate by choice. Now no one responds to my ads. They’d rather stay home and collect $200 than work a few hours a week with me.
Now the free money has dried up, people will have to go back to work. I hope people will start answering my ads again.
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Finding caregivers has definitely been tough for me too, especially because I try to do word of mouth so that the person I hire isn’t a total stranger. My mom is also getting older (we will keep that between us hahah) and I worry that I won’t be able to find additional help in the future. Everything is also just exponentially harder with the pandemic. I’ve never had a now show, however, I have had people who have told me they are “sick” as soon as I tell them I can’t go near anyone when they’re under the weather. These people never make a follow up meeting lol
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I wouldn’t know about non-medical caregivers, the ones who aren’t nurses, but if you are trying to find nurses (RNs and LPNs), its never been this bad. I’ve received nurses in my home for 34 years and I’ve certainly seen home care go through ups and downs over the years, but not like this. Before Covid, I would maybe have to interview 10 or 11 nurses before I found a good one. Now I have to interview more than double that. This is because all the good ones either don’t want to go into the community at all because of the virus, or they don’t want to see any new clients and bring back germs to their regular patients.
I’m not trying to scare anyone, but that’s how low the nursing supply is in home care right now. What I’ve done to try and deal with it is go from one nursing agency to two. Then I went from two to three. If each agency can give you one or two good nurses sometimes you can piece together a staff that way. In North Carolina the State Medicaid allows you to have as many agencies as you need at once. Hopefully it’s the same way in other states.
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