All Change (again)

Just to make life even friggin harder, my main carer of 11 months has left. She was only obliged to give 2 weeks notice, so she did. As she had a weeks holiday owed, she only had to work for a week, therefore allowing no time to arrange a replacement carer let alone provide training! I don't know who I am more pissed off with; the agency for having inadequate employee contracts or the carer for having no quarms about leaving in a manner that she knew would result in enormous stress and inconvenience for me.


So for two weeks I have had a selection of my relief carers covering full time while they found a new carer. The problem with that is that they are completely unaware of some of the routine and the bits they do know are never done precisely correct because they only do the routine occasionally and therefore I haven't bothered explaining the differences. Trying to explain subtle details to 4 different carers with poor English using eyegaze typing pushes even my patience beyond breaking point.

The new carer started last week and seems nice and her English is excellent but as usual she has no care experience so will have to learn everything. Of course being trained by a relief carer is like the visually impaired leading the blind. Had I not intervened with some persuasive emails, the agency would have had 3 different relief carers training her for just 3 days. I have laboriously written detailed lists of step by step instructions to try and help. The shower routine is particularly detailed, comprising of over 60 instructions. I am without my computer for the whole routine so once I am out of bed I can't tell them anything.

With my call being her 3rd of the day at 9am the training process has meant that she has been arriving at 9:45 and with my usual 45 minute routine taking 90 minutes, I am not getting out of my bedroom until after 11. It was shower day today so I wasn't finished until midday!

I am just about keeping my patience as I slowly type out instructions to do the most basic of tasks like brushing teeth. The new carer is very nice, has perfect English which is really helpful and if she stays, could be one of the best carers I have had, I am sure she will get there, but I just could do without it.