Homewatch CareGivers of Novi, MI

We’ve been using homewatch for couple of years for my Dad. We had one person who basically sat and watched tv with him but my mom liked a lot. During COVID that person never wore a mask and then got a new job. We tried to hire additional help during the whole spring but no one would call back or eventually they couldn’t fill the shifts. They hired a new person for the shifts we had who never showed up and was fired or quit. They hired someone who was great for two of the original three shifts. Mind you this whole time we’d needed more shifts due to significant decline and had been attempting to get them to fill more shifts but we’d gone down instead. My dad started getting hospice at home and we again told them we needed more shifts. I was frustrated with my mom about not being clear with them but later realized it wasn’t my mom. He became bed ridden and went to respite through hospice. I sat with my mom where she had a 15-20 minute conversation listing the shifts we needed filled, when he was coming home and what we needed done on Tuesday. Meanwhile we are dealing with the lawyer, I went to see a home, respite dropped me dad on his head, the usual. Friday he’s coming home and I realize we have no confirmation that we do or do not have care. My mom calls at noon. We get no call back. I call at 4:45 Friday and the scheduler claims she doesn’t know we need care (she’s leaving and my mom spoke to the new person). She puts me on speaker phone with the owner who starts to say that they have lots of ways to work with people who needs more care and I interrupt to tell her we spoke at length about this but she angrily interrupts me to ask if she can speak and tells me they record the calls. A clear threat. I let her speak for a while let her finish, don’t speak at all and then ask for permission to speak. I then ask her to go back and listen to the call and ask her if we’d given her a clear list of multiple shifts that we needed filled on Tuesday and they never called back would that be ok? And she said it would be completely unacceptable. Homewatch by their own admission is completely unacceptable.

We got off to a rough start at first, but hoping things will improve from here. Staff seems intent on following through which is promising.

Have visited director at her office. Was very impressed with her and the kind of services offered. We are still waiting on the right time to introduce a caregiver to my mother-in-law. Breanne provided many good thoughts and ideas in order for us to approach this change to her and the rest of the family.