Visiting Angels Senior Home Care

Update (July 3, 2009):
After reading my post and taking offense to it because it wasn’t a positive review (ummm, can we say «tantrum»?), Visiting Angels of Fremont (VAF) has decided not to «help» my mom instead of rectifying their problem by training their employees to adhere to documented medical suggestions that their clients receive from medical doctors… among other rules.
Oh well, I guess we’re just going to have to go with a more professional company that only insists on hiring qualified helpers. Give thanks I didn’t send my mom here:
However, just because my mom’s experience wasn’t as tragic as the one in the article above, that doesn’t make VAF’s services worth more than one star — a generous rating, imo.
For anyone who wants more details about VAF before wasting your money on them, please feel free to PM me. I’d be more than happy to answer any questions about what I witnessed and experienced, including an email from Haja, the second helper, admitting to her mistakes.
Original Post (May 24, 2009):
We recruited Visiting Angels of Fremont (VAF) to help my 70-​something year old mother once a week. Her post-​stroke condition, which includes prescribed medications and a low-​fat/​low-​sodium diet, was made crystal clear at the in-​take appointment.
Unfortunately, the two care providers they’ve given us so far would rather do what my mother asks/​tells them (i.e., buy her food and other items she doesn’t need) instead of using their employer, VAF, as a reason for needing to keep her out of harm’s way and not give her the food and items she’s requesting (e.g., «Sorry, ma’am, but my employer’s have told me X, so I can’t provide you with Z while I’m on my shift. Rules are rules.»).
After complaining the first time about Anita (the first helper) VAF’s manager, Deanne, sent Haja (a second helper) to help my mom. Unfortunately, I still needed to go grocery shopping with Haja to make sure that she bought the right things for my mother; and the two or three times I didn’t go with Haja to help her do *her* job (Right, I’ve got my own full-​time job, but I still had to micro-​manage an employee that’s not even mine.), Haja ended up buying my mom food products that were neither low-​sodium nor low-​fat.
There was even one time when Haja bought my mother an over-​the-​counter inhaler. Why was that a problem? Because I made the effort to share a list of the meds my mom had been prescribed during the VAF in-​take appointment with Deanne, including the doctor-​prescribed inhaler. Was this info not passed on to Haja? Or was this another instance when a VAF helper knew what my mom was/wasn’t supposed to have, but decided to enable my mom’s unhealthy habits? Not cool.
Do you want one of Anita’s highlights (aside from her buying my mother a bag of fried chicken and offering to get my mother greasy, sodium-​laden Chinese take-​out on the same day, even when she knew that high-​sodium/​high-​fat foods weren’t good for my mother)?
One day Anita decided to deposit my mother’s teacher’s pension check into my mom’s bank without my mom — but with my mom’s account info, signature, and after the transaction, her bank balance on the receipt — when she knew that doing so was against VAF’s policy. Nice, huh?
While I’ve made the effort to speak with Deanne, the manager from VAF, about my concerns on more than one occasion, and while I want to believe that she has made a conscious effort to communicate my concerns to her in-​home care providers, I question why VAF would employ people who can’t or aren’t willing to follow the simplest of rules.
As the weeks tick by before I need to leave my mother after helping her get back on her feet after her stroke, I’m nervous about leaving my mother in the care of VAF.
If a hospital and acute rehabilitation center can successfully employ a staff that can out-​manipulate patients who like to get the better of them (which I did my best to make perfectly clear to Deanne, Anita and Haja from the beginning), then why can’t VAF employ a staff of the same caliber? With the economy the way it is right now with people needing jobs, you’d think that:
a) VAF would make sure they’re employing people with a professional attitude, of which I’m sure there are many with today’s unemployment rate; and
b) the in-​home care providers employed by VAF would make a stronger effort to be in good standing with their employer by following rules. It’s not like they have the academic qualifications (yet) to get a better gig; but at the same time, the helpers who worked with my mom chose to do what they wanted as if they were irreplaceable.
After my most recent complaint, we’ll see if Visiting Angels can convince their in-​home care providers that they should feel blessed to be employed.