In my last blog, I wrote about my carers and how poorly run the Agency that supplies them is, and how this can impact on people. Well last night was a classic example of them not knowing their arse from their elbow.
I have three calls a day.
The first is early in the morning to help me get up out of bed, go to the toilet, then shower and dry, before helping me dress and put on my compression stockings.
The second call is at midday, when the carer comes and helps me to the toilet.
With both of these calls, the carer, should get my breakfast and lunch, but as Mum is here, she gets my meals for me, as she would be doing her own anyway.
In the evening I originally had a call to put me to bed. However, I found that carers would regularly turn up between 7.30 and 8.30 pm to put me to bed, which is far to early. We then changed the call so a carer would come at 7.00 pm, to take me to the toilet, get me ready for bed and then put me in my armchair, where I could watch TV, and then Mum would put me to bed later on.
However since Mum's episode where she had to go to hospital, just over a month ago, she has been to tired and unwell to put me to bed. So we asked the agency if a carer could come later in the evening to put me to bed. The carer who was doing my evening call at the time, Shola, said she could not come after 8.30 pm, which was too early to go to bed, so the Agency arranged for Margaret, my regular carer, to come at the end of her evening round. This means I get put to bed between 10.30 and 11.30 pm which suits me much better.
Well last night, I had just finished dinner, and was watching the World Athletics Championship on TV, when the door bell rang at about 6.50 pm.
Mum answered the door to find a carer stood there, who had come to put me to bed!
I had meet the girl, Marilyn, before. I explained that I did not want to go to bed at that time and that my normal call, was by Margaret much later. She said she had just been asked to cover the call, but had been told to be here at 7.00 pm.
Now usually, if Margaret is going to be off, she will let me know about a week before hand, and as she had left the night before, she had clearly said to me, "See you tomorrow".
Marilyn, had come out to me on the bus, as her car is in the garage, and it wasn't possible for her to come out to me later. Plus she had just walked up the road from the bus stop, in the pouring rain, and was already soaked.
We chatted about the problem, for a bit, and I then decided that I should call the "on-call" service, to tell them of the problem, and to ask them to send out a carer to me later on.
When I got through to the number, I spoke to a girl named Nicola. I explained the problem to her and asked if Margaret was not working and if my carers were changing, why I hadn't been told.
Nicola didn't know whether Margaret was working or not. She also couldn't explain why I had not been told about the change. She then looked at her rota for the rest of the week, and said that Marilyn was due to come to me tomorrow and the Shola would be coming to me on Thursday and Friday. I asked if this was the case, whether Margaret had been taken away from me. Her response was, "Oh, it looks like it".
At this point I hit the roof. Trying desperately to stay calm - put failing - I explained that I had never been consulted about any of these changes. That 7.00 pm was far too early to expect me to go to bed, and if they wanted to change the time of the call they should have talked to me about it first.
I told Nicola, that she needed to find out what was happening, and get a carer to come out to me later on. Also she should contact her Manager - a useless idiot if ever there was one - and get him to explain to me why I had not been told about any of these changes. I then rang off.
I got Marilyn to write up the care book, with what had happened, and signed her timesheet, so at least she would get paid for coming out - the least I could do after her having to sit on the bus and then get soaked walking up the road.
About 20 minutes later, Margaret phoned to say, not to worry she would be seeing me later as normal, and she was working.
About 10 minutes after that, Nicola rang back to say Margaret was coming out. I apologised if I had shouted at her or been rude, and she said I had been quite reasonable under the circumstances.
Half an hour later, Olo, one of the guys that works in the office, rang to apologise for the confusion, and to say that it had all now been sorted out, and Margaret was coming to me. (I took from this that I wasn't going to get a call from the manager).
Having got me all worked up and annoyed - and having missed the end on the Women's Pole Vault final - I sat down in my armchair to watch TV.
About 11.25 pm, Margaret let herself in.
She told me that the problem was that when my evening call changed from Shola at 7.00 pm to Margaret after 10.30 pm, the office had never taken me off Shola's rota. Therefore when Shola was taking a couple of days off, they covered the call with another carer. But if they had phoned me to tell me about the change I could have pointed out their mistake, and Marilyn wouldn't need to have come out.
I told Margaret, that Marilyn had come out on the bus and had got soaked, getting here, and that I had signed her timesheet. She said that she would get paid, but as it was the Agencies mistake they will have to pay for it.
So this is a good example of how a simple mistake throws the Agency into confusion. They didn't seem to know who should be working, or was working, and therefore who Marilyn was covering for.
Chaos rules!
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