After working with 4 different care agencies over the past few years my overall assessment is that Home Instead is far and away the best on the island, with a few caveats.
Paul is the owner and though he lives in California he has been involved and available always from day one, and hires great people to run this operation. Ty and Andy especially we have found to be nearly always responsive, compassionate and organized, often going above and beyond. Just really nice people. Many agencies only have one contact person, Home Instead provides a team, so that you are never left hanging.
You want foremost to know you can count on the staff in charge to make sure all the needs of your loved one are addressed and that the care plan and any important changes are clearly and quickly communicated to caregivers. AND of course that they have a deep enough bench of qualified caregivers Overall the people they have sent to care for my Mom have been wonderful and the staff always professional. Our Mom has Alzheimers so we were especially impressed that Home Instead even offers their staff special training in how to work with clients with dementia.
Now the caveats:
1. NO DIRECT CAREGIVER COMMUNICATION: The downside of working with agencies is that most will NOT allow you to communicate directly with your loved ones caregiver, except while they are physically on the premises working, and only using your LO's landline, not the caregivers cell. Need to get an urgent message to a caregiver? "Tsunami coming, please get mom to high ground!" Or send a photo, text or document by cell? Good luck. All has to go via staff. And when that second hand relay doesn't work it can be just a hassle or hazardous i.e. "surgery scheduled, mom must not eat tomorrow morning!"
2. REPORTING: Want to hear how your LO's day went, if they fell or fainted, were upset by something, agitated, hurt? Caregivers keep a log of what happened during their shift, which is helpful for the next caregiver arriving, but if you aren't regularly at your loved ones house to review it, or live elsewhere, the log is useless as a reporting device for family. There is an online "portal" where caregivers check off tasks performed. But it is pretty rudimentary. Staff came up with a workaround for us, allowing us to create our own checklist and sheet to write comments that caregivers can photograph and send on to us via staff. But still not as good as getting a phone call post shift to just say- "hey, Mom was really upset or depressed today" Or "the bank called and needs her signature on an important document", Or "she may have just given $10,000 away over the phone" (Yes, this happened. Thankfully when her private caregiver was there who texted us ASAP to alert us)
3. BAD EXPERIENCE WITH KAT T: Most of Home Instead's caregivers have been great but we cannot recommend Kat. Want to be regularly lectured about how it's YOUR JOB to take care of your own mother? Or alternately be told to stop meddling, "chill out" when you do get involved, or bring up an important task she overlooked (i,e. Mom's hearing aids again not turned on so she could not hear all day)? Then you'll do great with Kat. We found her exceptionally difficult to work with. She refused to work as part of a team with our other caregivers. Had a car, but she didn't like the hassle of having to walk to get her car to take mom places so we ended up having to cancel all morning appointments, and shift those to her afternoon caregivers. She was diligent about laundry and dishes, but seemed more comfortable most days acting as maid more than companion. She's probably best with a mostly nonverbal client who just needs to be cleaned up after and fed, and with a family who are happy to let her run her own show without any input. read more