Raphaels Home Care Limited

We hired Home Care to make regular calls on my elderly aunt who has memory issues, initially for 3 days a week, increasing to 4 days. First impressions were good - a face-to-face meeting to discuss my aunt's situation and needs followed by a meeting with the nurse assigned to look after my aunt. All was well for about 6 months until the reguler nurse turned into 3 different nurses without informing any of my family about the change, so we had no chance to advise my aunt that new people would be coming to visit her. For someone with memory issues this raises obvious security concerns because we don't want her opening the door to strangers. Unfortunately they were totally uncooperative and lacking in understanding when we spoke to them about this and refused to go back to the original arrangement of one regular nurse. We then noticed that the standard of service and care was deteriorating - bedding hadn't been changed and her flat was becoming dirty and unkempt. On some occassions the 'day book' had no entry, so we had nothing to indicate that a nurse had even turned up that particular day, even though nurses are supposed to make daily notes in that book. When we raised this and asked for the most recent month's nurse rota for our aunt they refused to provide it. When I put in writing that if there were any further days on which the day book had no entry I would assume that no nurse had attended my aunt, they invoked the termination clause in my aunt's contract. Nice. I wouldn't use the word 'professional' to describe this organisation and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone looking for home care for a relative. They score 0/10 for customer service.
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