Another
serious issue involves the quality of home care the elderly residents
are receiving. There is an organization called HomeWorks that is somehow
affiliated with Hebrew SeniorLife. They have an office here in the
building, and for years, they’ve hired out most of the residents’
caretakers. However, increasingly over the past couple of years,
residents’ families have been hiring unskilled, untrained women, mainly
from Haiti, to serve as caretakers because they can hire them for far
less than they can hire professionals. These women are essentially
babysitters, but the families don’t appear to care as long as they’re
cheaper.
The problem is that these women have no idea of how to behave professionally, and don’t care to learn. They make a tremendous amount of noise by slamming doors, having frequent, loud conversations in the halls, talking on their cell phones, etc. Occasionally they’ll bring their children to work with them, and they’ll run up and down the halls out of boredom. When you ask them to try to keep the noise down, they resent it terribly; they glare at you and say nothing. This disturbs a lot of people and complaints have been lodged, but - need I say it again? - the management looks the other way and refuses to intervene.
Until recently, there was a 104 year-old woman in the apartment next to me. She was bedridden and wheelchair-bound, and barely aware of what was going on around her. She should have been placed in a nursing facility years ago, but for some reason, her daughter was reluctant to do so. About two years ago, the daughter hired a number of these unskilled women, and they came and went in shifts around the clock. There were never fewer than two, and frequently there were three of them in the apartment at any time. I could hear them talking and laughing whenever I walked by; it was like a party for them. They came and went at all hours, slamming the door, making noise in the hall. I complained repeatedly and next-to-nothing was done. On two occasions, after I'd complained profusely, someone from the management reluctantly had a quiet word with one of them, but nothing changed and I was told, “We can’t do any more because these women don’t work for us”, which is nonsense, because as I mentioned in an earlier post, they not only have the legal right to intervene under the terms of the contract each resident is required to sign, they are legally obligated to do so. I’ve tried to explain this to them on numerous occasions, but they simply don’t want to hear it.
A few weeks ago, the head of the Social Services Department (who does absolutely nothing here as far as I’ve been able to determine) asked me, “Have you noticed a difference now that E. [the 104 year-old woman] is gone?” I said, “E. is gone?” She said, “Oh, she didn’t die! They placed her in a nursing home.”
Now, it was a stupid question for her to ask me in the first place, because she was acknowledging implicitly that they had done nothing about the situation in over a year of my complaining; however, I merely said, “Well no, I haven’t noticed a difference, because in addition to all of the other noise issues with which I’m dealing, the woman in that apartment [I pointed to a unit diagonally across the hall] has a similar situation with caretakers going on.”
She replied, “A. has around-the-clock care? I didn’t know that!” Of course she didn’t; it’s only her job to know. Letting that one go as well, I asked her, “Where did they put E.?” She then froze momentarily. It was now a privacy issue; she didn’t know whether or not she should tell me, so she merely smiled and said, “Someplace nice!” I said, “Good, I’m glad it’s ‘someplace nice’. It should have been done two to three years ago”, and as I turned to walk away, she said, “Well, if the family can afford around-the-clock care, we can’t… .” I just kept walking.
This is their knee-jerk response to every problem, great or trivial: “We can’t.” It’s nonsense, of course, because again, they have the legal right and obligation to act, but they resist doing so at every turn. The half-dozen women who pretend to run this facility do no work; all they ever do is have meetings. Whenever you go to look for one of them, she’s in a meeting, but nothing ever seems to result from them. The levels of apathy and incompetence here are unparalleled; I’ve never seen anything like them.
These people are lucky to have jobs, but even so, they simply refuse to do them.
The problem is that these women have no idea of how to behave professionally, and don’t care to learn. They make a tremendous amount of noise by slamming doors, having frequent, loud conversations in the halls, talking on their cell phones, etc. Occasionally they’ll bring their children to work with them, and they’ll run up and down the halls out of boredom. When you ask them to try to keep the noise down, they resent it terribly; they glare at you and say nothing. This disturbs a lot of people and complaints have been lodged, but - need I say it again? - the management looks the other way and refuses to intervene.
Until recently, there was a 104 year-old woman in the apartment next to me. She was bedridden and wheelchair-bound, and barely aware of what was going on around her. She should have been placed in a nursing facility years ago, but for some reason, her daughter was reluctant to do so. About two years ago, the daughter hired a number of these unskilled women, and they came and went in shifts around the clock. There were never fewer than two, and frequently there were three of them in the apartment at any time. I could hear them talking and laughing whenever I walked by; it was like a party for them. They came and went at all hours, slamming the door, making noise in the hall. I complained repeatedly and next-to-nothing was done. On two occasions, after I'd complained profusely, someone from the management reluctantly had a quiet word with one of them, but nothing changed and I was told, “We can’t do any more because these women don’t work for us”, which is nonsense, because as I mentioned in an earlier post, they not only have the legal right to intervene under the terms of the contract each resident is required to sign, they are legally obligated to do so. I’ve tried to explain this to them on numerous occasions, but they simply don’t want to hear it.
A few weeks ago, the head of the Social Services Department (who does absolutely nothing here as far as I’ve been able to determine) asked me, “Have you noticed a difference now that E. [the 104 year-old woman] is gone?” I said, “E. is gone?” She said, “Oh, she didn’t die! They placed her in a nursing home.”
Now, it was a stupid question for her to ask me in the first place, because she was acknowledging implicitly that they had done nothing about the situation in over a year of my complaining; however, I merely said, “Well no, I haven’t noticed a difference, because in addition to all of the other noise issues with which I’m dealing, the woman in that apartment [I pointed to a unit diagonally across the hall] has a similar situation with caretakers going on.”
She replied, “A. has around-the-clock care? I didn’t know that!” Of course she didn’t; it’s only her job to know. Letting that one go as well, I asked her, “Where did they put E.?” She then froze momentarily. It was now a privacy issue; she didn’t know whether or not she should tell me, so she merely smiled and said, “Someplace nice!” I said, “Good, I’m glad it’s ‘someplace nice’. It should have been done two to three years ago”, and as I turned to walk away, she said, “Well, if the family can afford around-the-clock care, we can’t… .” I just kept walking.
This is their knee-jerk response to every problem, great or trivial: “We can’t.” It’s nonsense, of course, because again, they have the legal right and obligation to act, but they resist doing so at every turn. The half-dozen women who pretend to run this facility do no work; all they ever do is have meetings. Whenever you go to look for one of them, she’s in a meeting, but nothing ever seems to result from them. The levels of apathy and incompetence here are unparalleled; I’ve never seen anything like them.
These people are lucky to have jobs, but even so, they simply refuse to do them.
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