Screening Eldercare Candidates to Reduce the Risk of Abuse, Neglect and Identity Theft
The interview process can seem - and in fact is - time consuming. But it is time well spent: with all this information, you and your parents should be able to select the person best suited to help your parents. Before making a job offer, however, you must attend to the final, most important step: assessing whether this promising candidate will provide safe, attentive care.
Frail elders and dependent adults are at risk for neglect, physical, sexual and emotional abuse and exploitation in much the same ways that children are. Having more assets than children, they are at unparalleled risk for financial abuse, fraud, theft and identify theft. They may be more isolated than children who typically go to child care or school, places infested by mandated reporters (people required by state law to report suspicions of neglect and abuse to the appropriate protective agency). At a minimum, children play outside and tend to be noticed by neighbors. Children cry and scream when hit, distressing sounds that are often overheard by neighbors.
Housebound elders, on the other hand, may be invisible and inaudible to their well-intentioned neighbors and be isolated in general. Their human contact may consist of their in-home help and the occasional visit to the doctor and dentist. They might find it too humiliating and frightening to ask for protection from somebody caring for them. And they may believe they have no alternative.
You can reduce, but not remove, the risk of hiring somebody who might abuse, neglect or defraud your parents through prudent screening of candidates, including those provided by an agency, and by monitoring frequently and dropping in unexpectedly as often as you can.
A responsible screening protocol includes two key steps:
? Checking references and
? Screening against registries that can provide additional information about the candidate and validate or contradict information provided by the candidate.
Checking References
Remember the references you collected either in the phone interview or the face-to-face interview? They are of no value unless you call the numbers and ask questions about the candidates. Unfortunately, references almost always say good things about candidates. People simply don't volunteer the names of former employers likely to speak negatively about their performance and former employers fear being sued if they provide more than dates of employment. Beyond that, people with problematic pasts use the skills they developed along their troubled way to fabricate references using relatives and cohorts, making reference checking difficult. To help you get the most from reference checks, get a chronological resume of the candidate. This resume structure allows you to ask about specific jobs, responsibilities, and gaps of employment, gaps that could result from an illness, a new baby, or jail time.
Once again, the reference checking protocol varies slightly depending on the nature of the hire.
Agency hire:
Although housekeeping agencies may not check references, home health aide agencies will. They are not likely to let you contact the references but may share what clients have had to say about the helper they are planning to send you. Ask specifically what people most liked and disliked about this person and what the agency sees as his or her strengths and weaknesses. These pluses and minuses should help you assess how the candidate fits with your parents' priorities.
Private Hire:
Candidates should provide the names, phone numbers, and addresses of clients and relatives of clients. These people can tell you what it feels like to receive care from the candidates and can describe strengths and weaknesses from their perspective. The candidates should have let the references know to expect calls; they may also have told them what to say. So it's important to ferret out actual information from the vague nice things people say and to consider references in concert with more objective indicators. Pin down the legitimacy of the reference by asking for specifics about when and where the person worked, the nature of the tasks, and the candidate's strengths and weaknesses.
Remember that employers, wary of litigation, rarely do more than confirm dates of employment.
Getting the information: What to ask
? How long and in what capacity has the reference known the candidate?
? For what services would the reference employ the candidate?
? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the candidate?
? What was one thing you wish the candidate did differently?
? What do you value most about the candidate?
? When the candidate wasn't on time, what happened?
? If you were going to give the candidate some advice, what would it be?
? I will probably need to hire 2 people to help me. Which tasks should I offer this candidate and which should I offer the other person? What should I be prepared to have backup for?
? Tell me how you and the candidate handled a difference of opinion.
? Working in somebody else's home creates an immediate and sometimes awkward intimacy. Describe the candidate's boundaries.
Be wary of vague positives or a lack of specificity. Listen for answers like "He tries hard," "She cares." "Well, I didn't employ him in that capacity;" "It wasn't a good fit."
Be wary also of conflicting information, an unwillingness to share specific stories, or curt answers. These should be red flags.
If previous employers can't speak well of the candidate or something just doesn't add up for you, stop here.
If the candidate has good references, congratulations. You are moving on to the final step of the hiring process: screening.
Lynn Loar, Ph.D., LCSW, has created a webpage, SafeHelpInYourHome.com SafeHelpInYourHome.com, to show you how to craft a caregiver job description, describe all those details so essential to your parents, decide whether to hire through an agency or independently, how to screen, interview and check references to reduce the risk of abuse, neglect, theft and identity theft, how to offer the job and provide a feedback loop to adjust and update plans as needed.
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