Who was supposed to be paying them?
My parents were/are. My husband and I have POA.
Dad's care package is arranged via the local authority as historically it was put in place when he was discharged from hospital 3 years ago following a hip fracture, although his needs have increased significantly since then and he was diagnosed with dementia last February. We pay the council by DD every month.
My mothers domestic care was a private arrangement with us and the care provider.
She had a 6 week funded care package after she was in hospital in July, but it was stopped early when the SW did a reassessment at 4 weeks and mum told her they weren't providing any personal care. That was in August.
One of the reasons she was given the care package at discharge was that she was struggling to stand for long enough to prepare food or a hot drink for her and dad, and carry them through to the living room, and she was also suffering from low BP and dizziness. They assessed that she needed help with showering (or rather I did , as she didn't have a bathing OT assessment, they just told me they were discharging her with a zimmer frame for walking)
After the 4 weeks discharge package was stopped in August, we decided to continue them for 30 minutes a day to do some cleaning etc, but they've been failing to consistently provide an acceptable level of care .
They sent an invoice for 10 weeks service by post to Mum at the end of October when we'd agreed that they would email it to me. I wasn't even sure that they were still providing the service , as the house wasn't very clean and mum was telling me they weren't cleaning and no bill was sent to me. They aren't very good at communicating,
Mum didn't give me the bill until Nov 5th a she also has memory problems.
When I saw that from August to September they'd billed for 3 days 30 minutes and 2 days 45 minutes shower, I sent an email and said this wasn't what was agreed in August, and that the reason the SW stopped the funded package early was because mum wasn't receiving any personal care, and that she hadn't been showered by the carers since then either.
I agreed that if they amended the bill for August to September to 30 minutes 7 days a week, I'd pay that, even though I wasn't sure that the carers were actually cleaning,
At that point I wasn't aware that I could have access to my parents social care records via an app', but someone else who uses the company told me about it , and I asked for access. They (the director) told me that they would have to seek permission from Mum to allow me to access her records. I explained that my husband and I have POA and needed the access to be able to reconcile the invoices with the care provided and the times the carers were in attendance. She said she would still have to visit and ask Mam's permission.
She must have looked at the carers records for the remainder of the billing period ie September to mid October , as she then sent me an email saying I was quite correct and that the carers had been writing "nothing required" in the visit notes and she cancelled that invoice for those 6 weeks.
At that point she asked me if I was going to continue to dispute the invoices , as if I was then she would have to suspend care until "we sorted it out", whatever that meant. I told her that I couldn't dispute charges that I hadn't yet been invoiced for, and surely we'd have to see how it went going forwards. She promised she would be monitoring Mam care on a daily basis, and added a list of suggested cleaning to the tasks on the visit schedule, eg vacuuming, washing up, emptying bins, cleaning the bathroom, making beds , helping with laundry and changing beds.
The next invoice for mid October to mid November arrived shortly after that, but obviously it covered a period that had already passed.
I wasn't prepared to pay it until I had access to the app to be able to reconcile the invoice with the times and tasks. By the beginning of December se hadn't ( as far as I was aware) been out to ask for Mam;s permission to give me access to her records, so I emailed and asked for the app access. I was told she was going out to visit Mam soon.
I actually got access to the app on December 14th, about 10 days before the invoice for mid November to mid December arrived.
Once I got access to the app, as well as trying to check with Mum what they were doing , I started checking daily what they were documenting in the notes . I could see the time that the departure note was written, but not what time they actually "checked in" , only the scheduled visit start time. I knew that the only things they said they were doing were vacuuming (about 4 times a week-its a tiny 2 bed , 1 reception bungalow) washing up, wiping kitchen benches down and emptying the bins ,but looking at the state of the wood floors and carpets that didn't seem likely. Cleaning of anything in the bathroom was mentioned less than once a week (bearing in mind that Dad's not very good with the loo, they have a raised loo seat , the carers all go in there with outdoor shoes on and dad and mam with bare feet, and we are still in the midst of COVID) Their side tables (they eat in the living room as no dining table) were covered in sticky marks and a week or so ago I went down and moved some bits of torn up tissue that had taken up residence on Dad's side table where his water jug, inhalers and eye ointments live and they were on top of a small bowl of fruit fly infested rotten grapes !
So hopefully you get the picture that there wasn't 3.5 hrs a week of cleaning happening.
I asked the director if she could run a query and provide me with the check in times for the visits from mid October to mid December along with the carers notes. Alternatively I said we would pay 60%, or 20 minutes per day, of the invoices, as having looked at what they were documenting doing and at the state of the house, I was pretty sure they weren't cleaning for 30 minutes per day.
She sent the report, and told me that she was suspending Mams care "until we could sort things out" (she likes that phrase)
The report shows lots of comments of "nothing required" or "washed up and emptied the bins" "vacuumed through" "tidied bathrrom Again, any bathroom cleaning is mentioned less than once a week.
More telling are the times which for approx 80% of the times show they were there for less than 25 minutes and approximately 50% of the visits were less than 15 minutes. Some of the dates were missing from the report so we aksed for those and said the report showed that sinceNovember, when she promised to monitor things, they'd continued to invoice Mum for services that hadn't been provided.
At this point she sent a perfectly pleasant and apologetic email saying they didn't feel they could continue to provide care for mam at all. and would have to think about whether they could provide care for dad either.
The next day she called in a bit of a strop and was quite unpleasant and unprofessional and told me she would be contacting social services and telling them they wouldn't be providing care for dad after the 4 weeks notice period and she'd be contacting the CQC and if I contacted them she hoped I wouldn't do it anonymously .
Then yesterday, despite me trying to to speak to a SW re the dynamic of the situation regarding mam and dad for over a week, a SW rang at 6pm because , of course , the care provider had been on the phone and told them they were stopping the service due to a break down in the relationship following non payment of bills.
She will also potentially be ticked off because I've recently raised concerns re the carers not completing the bedtime (6.30pm) hygiene tasks, especially as dad wears pull up pants , has had 2 episodes of thrush in his groins in the last 4 weeks, plus (because after he fell backwards on/off the perching stool in the bedroom when the carer was sitting him down, they decided the showering facilities weren't safe anymore) he only has strip washes until we can get the bathroom changed. Also lots of issues regarding them not putting his hearing aids in over the past months.
Sorry, that's a very long one, but I feel I have to justify everything as we've been made to feel like bad people who won't pay their bills!
I can't believe any "Care" provider would do this. It'll have a huge impact on my parents as Mam gets very anxious when new people come in as she feels they don' t know where anything is and she can't remember where things are because she doesn't really provide any personal care for Dad anymore. Because dad's had a few falls recently he lacks confidence so needs someone who knows him and is confident in providing his care. I suppose if the worst comes to the worst and the council can't find anyone then my husband and I will do it and then look for another agency privately.
I think they did well to get the money they did for August to September as I bet if I scrolled all the way back they were writing "nothing to do" every visit. She should have looked at the reports before she sent them and taken the 60%. I'd be furious if I was the director and that's what my staff had been doing. She did try to say that as per the contract, if we have a block of contracted time then we have to pay for it, but a contract's a 2 way thing surely and their part of the contract is to deliver what they say they will?
So here we are anyway.
