We had an extremely unfortunate experience with this agency. I waited for several weeks to write this review to make sure I am being fair. We were visited by Kathleen at our home and found her to be lovely and caring. She told us that Elder Assistance LLC offered in-home respite care and we went through all of the details. We needed someone to stay with my dad while we moved our daughter into college. We were contacted by Darien prior to the weekend and she told us that a woman would be coming to stay with dad and that she was experienced. Two days before we left we got a call that it would now be a young man...that was fine with us.. we asked to meet with him before. He showed up on time the day before for our "meet and greet" and we went through everything. He was 19 years old and I didn't have total confidence in his experience, but he seemed to be caring and kind. As the first day unfolded, I got a text message that the caregiver was not feeling well and he needed to lay down. I got another message later on saying that they had ordered lunch and Dad had eaten. Then, several hours later, I had a panicked phone call from the young man saying that Dad was extremely upset with him and was insisting that he leave (this is not typical behavior for my dad). We had just driven 10 hours in the pouring rain to get to our daughter's college and were in the middle of moving her in. The caregiver was crying, afraid that he would lose his job. I had to stop everything I was doing and call my brother in another city to come and be with my dad. My brother ended up having to call off of work for 3 days to stay with him. The agency didn't call me through all of this even though they were aware that it was all going on. When I finally called them they said they didnt' want to bother me during the move and that they had no one else to send out. They also thought Dad was "sundowning." We had a good conversation (Darien is EXTREMELY professional and an asset to this organization). We had not seen my dad act this way before, but I didn't really know what had triggered him. He is very "with it" so I thought there might be more to the story. When I got home my father told us that the young man came in, took a shower and went to bed. I knew he laid down but my dad said he only got up to get him lunch and then went back to sleep. He estimated that he slept for 5 1/2 of the 9 hours he was here. My dad was very unhappy about this (he knew how much we were paying for the services) and got more and more agitated which led to him telling the caregiver to leave. To his credit, the caregiver stayed until my brother arrived, but never spent any time talking with him...he was out the door in a flash. I called the company back once I got home and had a chance to hear my dad's side of the story. Quite honestly, I was mortified. Once again, I spoke with Darien who was very professional, apologetic and concerned. She told me that she would be addressing all of this with the caregiver and also discussing it with Kathleen and that she would have her call me the next day. I have never heard one word from Kathleen which truly disappointed me. I would have considered using them for other things in the future but her lack of response makes it too late for that now.
I do believe that this agency is probably pretty good for short-term, daily help, but I cannot ever recommend them for overnight care, They should re-evaluate their training processes and/or consider not offering respite care at all.