elderlinkhomecare.com
Not a Good Experience
My dad and I hired a caregiver from Elderlink named Joyiah, who worked with us for nearly a year, from March 2024, until the end of January, 2025. While she was overall very competent and kind to my father, I as her manager had a few important problems with her, which I outline in brief in the below message.
These problems resulted in a massive amount of stress for me as I helped to care for my dad during his last year of life. To provide you with some background - I was his primary caregiver: responsible for his healthcare, home, caregivers and finances during the last two years of his life. But as my dad required 24-hour care during the last year of his life, we also had to hire caregivers to help us.
The idea behind hiring competent caregivers was to provide my dad with additional help and take some responsibility and stress off of me, but unfortunately – Joyiah often added to mine.
In a nutshell, Joyiah missed a lot of work, necessitating that I constantly find and train replacements for her on a near-monthly basis, change my own schedule and take up a lot of my own time to rearrange the schedule and monitor the fill-in caregiver, who inevitably couldn’t understand my dad’s needs well as a new person. I don’t know if caregivers can appreciate how stressful and time consuming this is.
When I first voiced my concerns to Joyiah about this early on and asked her if she would be taking a lot of time off, she dismissed me and in a condescending manner told me that any person could easily fill in for her, because all elderly people are essentially the same in their care needs.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Every person is as unique as their fingerprint and it takes time to get to know the needs of a medically complex and terminally ill human being. I wonder if she has ever been on the other side of the fence and had to care for a terminally ill family member? I have done it three times over a period of eight years total, so I have a fair amount of experience in caregiving and I also have a medical background, so I know how complex a terminally ill person’s care can be.
Also, we had to double pay caregivers every time we needed to train a fill-in caregiver, nearly every time Joyiah took time off – because we had to give them at least a couple days of training on the basics of my dad’s care. And even still, I had to assist the fill-in caregivers, because nobody can know all the nuances of a person’s care after just 2 days of training.
Further, Joyiah treated me more like a peer than her employer, and would often talk to me in a condescending, high-minded manner. She responded in a disrespectful manner at times when I would make simple requests of her – something that I felt was reasonable because I too, was my dad’s caregiver and I knew him and his needs better than anyone. I was not a micromanager but as his daughter and primary caregiver, and her employer, I felt that it was reasonable for me to make occasional requests of her and check in with her daily to get an update on my dad’s condition and provide input on his needs, because he was very medically complex. And, simply because I loved him.
She was also rude to two of my dad’s other caregivers at times. When they would try to be friendly with her, she would respond abrasively and in a condescending manner at times. This is totally unacceptable.
I would never, in a million years, ever think of addressing an employer the way Joyiah talked to me. Even my father had said during her first months with us (before he had serious dementia during his last months of life), that he felt like she talked down to him. I felt the same way. Thankfully, he ended up liking her more toward the end of his life, and she was competent and (except for her absences) did a good job in caring for him.
Finally, after working with us for eight months, Joyiah told me that she wanted to take over one of the other caregiver’s night shifts, rather than continuing to work the dayshift, which is what we had hired her for, and which my dad was used to. She told me she would leave us if a night shift opportunity came up for her elsewhere.
I told her that I didn’t understand why she had accepted to work the day shift with us, if she wanted to only work nights in the first place. Elderlink did nothing to insist that she stay at the job position we hired her for, when I told them. They only told me that night shifts don’t become available that often, and so the implication was not to worry. But why not just tell her that she agreed to work the day shift for us and that she needed to honor her commitment to us?
So, realizing that Joyiah was not committed to my dad or our family, because she told us (after eight months) that she would leave us if a night position came up elsewhere – I went ahead and gave her the night shift with us to replace another caregiver who could no longer care for my dad. I did this because I didn’t want her to quit when I was in the middle of a major book project (I am a medical writer) and have to train someone else while overwhelmed with my own work.
But I did not want to do this, because my dad was used to and happy with Joyiah as his daytime caregiver, and change is very hard for people with dementia. Further, finding a new caregiver to work the night shift would have been easier, since my dad mostly slept during the night shift, and the day shift required someone with a higher level of expertise and experience. I was able to find someone who was competent to replace Joyiah for the day shift—but sadly, my father had a very hard time adapting to her during his last few months of life.
This was very hard on both him and me, because I ended up having to recruit, hire and help to train a new person over the holidays, a time when I was hoping to be able to rest after nearly two years of caregiving seven days a week (because hired caregivers can only do a fraction of what needs to be done for a terminally ill person—they don’t manage that person’s medical care, house or finances, for instance). Only a family member or other hired people can do that. And for a family member doing everything, it is a massive amount of work to be a manager for the sick person’s caregivers, and also fully responsible for the ailing person’s care and household/financial needs.
Further, I had to help the new caregiver daily, even after she was trained, in addition to fulfilling my own job and responsibilities, because my father often refused food from her and was scared of her, for many weeks. Sadly, I feel like my father left this world much sooner than his doctors anticipated, because he was not happy with the new caregiver and could not adapt to her, even though she was competent.
I have hired over 30 caregivers, between my late husband, mom and dad, and no caregiver has taken off as much time as Joyiah, and no caregiver has been as disrespectful toward me as she was. Again, she is competent, and as long as you don’t give her too many directives or don’t mind her frequent vacations – you will do fine with her. To be fair, she got married while she was working for us, and I understand that she needed time off for her honeymoon and wedding, but she also took several other trips throughout the year while working for us, and missed days of work for other reasons.
She missed on average 2-3 days per month out of a total of 16 work days, over the 10.5 months she was with us. During a few months, she took no time off, while during others, she took days or weeks off. This was just the calculated average. I had asked Elderlink in the beginning for a reliable caregiver. This to me, is not reliable.
Further, in her work with us, Joyiah would not do things like throw out old food in the fridge or take out the trash if “another caregiver was supposed to do it.” I never saw her vacuum my dad’s living area (I lived in the house with my dad), and she would not go the extra mile where household duties were concerned. I understand that caregivers are not housecleaners, but part of their duties are to clean the area of the one being cared for.
I was raised with a strong work ethic and sense of responsibility, and if I see something that needs to be done, I just do it. I don’t understand the pettiness of leaving a 30-second task undone because the former caregiver forgot to do it.
I was also taught that if you want to keep a job, you show up to work every day, you respect and defer to your employer, and you try to be helpful where help is needed. Sadly, I have observed that some caregivers from the younger generations (those under 40) have an “I’ll-do-what-I-want” attitude of entitlement toward their employers, and no sense of loyalty to the family they are caring for.
That said, as a general rule, the younger caregivers I have hired from other countries have been more respectful and had a better work ethic overall. Not all, of course, but some. The downside of foreign caregivers is that at times, their English isn’t good enough for the elderly with dementia or hearing problems to understand (and I encountered this as well with a few of ours), but in general, I have had good experiences in working with caregivers from other nations.
In any case, I feel that Joyiah is probably used to working alone and does not want the family of the one being cared for to be too involved. What’s more, she demonstrated no sympathy or compassion toward me for the challenges I faced while caring for my dad, or following his passing –while his other caregivers did. But to me, being a good caregiver isn’t just about being technically competent and attentive to the sick person in need – it’s about also having sympathy, and showing respect and kindness to the family of the sick one needing care.
Further, while the team at Elderlink was very kind, they did not offer to do anything about the way Joyiah disrespected me (until the end, when it was too late, and they then offered to speak with her) or provide stricter guidelines about her taking time off. When I had consulted with one of the team members early on about her frequent absences, the staff member simply told me that Elderlink’s caregivers are allowed something like 12 weeks off every year. I can’t recall if it was exactly that many weeks, but it was exorbitant. I recall spending the only much-needed vacation that I had had in over two years, on the beach in Costa Rica, looking for a fill-in caregiver for Joyiah because she gave me last-minute notice that she needed time off during my vacation. This was infuriating.
I thought –who in a responsible job position takes this much time off? It makes things very stressful for the family of a dying loved one, if a caregiver takes time off monthly, or for long periods, routinely. The president of Elderlink, Karen, told me that they like their caregivers to be well-rested, but what about the family of the sick person, who is contending with a lot of stress in their loved one’s last months of life as it is?
I dislike writing negative reviews, but I feel that others who are looking for help need to know the challenges I faced with this particular caregiver at Elderlink. My experience with Joyiah and the lack of action from the management team cost me and my dad tremendously: in terms of my time, energy and emotional and physical wellbeing, and my dad’s comfort, finances and emotional wellbeing. They will probably never understand or know just how much—unless they one day find themselves working seven days a week as a caregiver for a terminally ill family member for a prolonged period of time, as I have. And then and only then, might they understand.
In the meantime, I hope that this review will encourage those seeking out help for their loved ones, to ask upfront for a committed, reliable and respectful caregiver, and strongly define what that means. If you are the type of person who doesn’t mind having a different caregiver for your loved one every month, then no worries (but bear in mind that this can be very hard on the person needing care and their family) - and you are okay with being truly “hands off” with your loved one (which I don’t recommend either, as caregivers can’t possibly discern or do everything that a sick family member needs, like making decisions about their medical needs, which sometimes change daily) – then a caregiver like Joyiah will be great.
Elderlink’s team is friendly and communicative, and they work hard to place people with the right caregivers. Furthermore, the pay for caregivers is fair, but they are reticent to address the client’s needs at times when there is a problem. At least, that was my experience. Nonetheless, I am grateful for the care my dad received during his last year of life, and for Joyiah’s technical competence and kindness toward my dad in his last days.
