My dad and I hired a caregiver from Elderlink named Joyiah, who worked with us for nearly a year,…read morefrom March 2024, until the end of January, 2025. While she was overall very competent and kind to my father, I as her manager had a few important problems with her, which I outline in the below message.
These problems resulted in a massive amount of stress for me as I helped to care for my dad during his last year of life, and affected my own health. I was my dad's primary caregiver: responsible for his healthcare, home, caregivers and finances during the last two years of his life. But as my dad required 24-hour care during the last year of his life, we also had to hire caregivers to help us.
The idea behind hiring competent caregivers was to provide my dad with additional help and take some responsibility and stress off of me, but unfortunately - Joyiah often added to mine.
In a nutshell, Joyiah missed a lot of work, necessitating that I constantly find and train replacements for her on a near-monthly basis, change my own schedule and take up a lot of my own time to rearrange the schedule and monitor the fill-in caregiver, who inevitably couldn't understand my dad's needs well as a new person. I don't know if caregivers can appreciate how stressful and time consuming this is.
When I first voiced my concerns to Joyiah about this early on and asked her if she would be taking a lot of time off, she dismissed me and in a condescending manner told me that any person could easily fill in for her, because all elderly people are essentially the same in their care needs.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Every person is as unique as their fingerprint and it takes time to get to know the needs of a medically complex and terminally ill human being. I wonder if she has ever been on the other side of the fence and had to care for a terminally ill family member? I have done it three times over a period of eight years total, so I have a fair amount of experience in caregiving and I also have a medical background, so I know how complex a terminally ill person's care can be.
Also, we had to double pay caregivers every time we needed to train a fill-in caregiver, nearly every time Joyiah took time off - because we had to give them at least a couple days of training on the basics of my dad's care. And even still, I had to assist the fill-in caregivers, because nobody can know all the nuances of a person's care after just 2 days of training.
Further, Joyiah treated me more like a peer than her employer, and would often talk to me in a condescending, high-minded manner. She responded in a disrespectful manner at times when I would make simple requests of her - something that I felt was reasonable because I too, was my dad's caregiver and I knew him and his needs better than anyone. I was not a micromanager but as his daughter and primary caregiver, and her employer, I felt that it was reasonable for me to make requests of her and check in with her daily to get an update on my dad's condition and provide input on his needs, because he was very medically complex. And, simply because I loved him.
She was also rude to two of my dad's other caregivers at times. When they would try to be friendly with her, she would respond abrasively and in a condescending manner at times. This is totally unacceptable.
I would never, in a million years, ever think of addressing an employer the way Joyiah talked to me. Even my father had said during her first months with us (before he had serious dementia during his last months of life), that he felt like she talked down to him. I felt the same way. Thankfully, he ended up liking her more toward the end of his life, and she was competent and (except for her absences) did a good job in caring for him.
Finally, after working with us for eight months, Joyiah told me that she wanted to take over one of the other caregiver's night shifts, rather than continuing to work the dayshift, which is what we had hired her for, and which my dad was used to. She told me she would leave us if a night shift opportunity came up for her elsewhere.
I told her that I didn't understand why she had accepted to work the day shift with us, if she wanted to only work nights in the first place. Elderlink did nothing to insist that she stay at the job position we hired her for, and did not tell her that she needed to honor her commitment to us. They also allowed her to take as much time off as she wanted.
So, realizing that Joyiah was not committed to my dad or our family, because she told us (after eight months) that she would leave us if a night position came up elsewhere - I hired a new daytime caregiver. Sadly, my dad was unable to adapt to her and left this world much sooner than I believe he would have otherwise, in part because the caregiver whom he had grown accustomed to, was no longer there. For my full review, see: https://trustburn.com/reviews/elderlink-home-care-inc