Preventing Abuse by a Home Health Aide with Hidden Cameras

When you have a home heath aide for your loved one, you might feel concerned about what happens when you are not home. There are some scary stories about home health aides acting abusively or neglecting clients. Some people put these in place to make sure that their loved one will remain safe from harm. No one wants their loved one at risk of harm just because the aide hired can’t be trusted. Installing cameras in your home could help you supervise the aide. Cameras can have some pros and cons. I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages here.

Benefits of Cameras

Having cameras in your house to keep an eye on a home health aide can be beneficial if you suspect any problems. Here are a few reasons that having cameras would be a good thing.

• Check on your loved one when you are not there. With cameras installed in the house that your loved one is staying in, you can be sure that they are ok. You can then call the aide and tell them that they need to get back to your loved one because something is not right.
• See if the aide is doing what they should be doing. A home health aide is there to make sure your loved one has everything they need when they need it. Some aides do not do their job exactly how they should. Some might ignore their patients. In addition, some might forget to give them medications at the right time. Some might not even show up when they are supposed to. Having the cameras in your loved one’s home can help you see that they are doing what you are paying them to do.
• See if there is abuse after noticing signs of it. Some aides are abusive to their patients. If you suspect abuse, you can watch to see if anything is actually happening. If there is no abuse going on, you will have nothing to worry about, but if there is, you will be able to put a stop to it. You should be able to trust that your loved one’s aide is taking good care of your loved one, not abusing them.

Drawbacks of Cameras

Cameras in your loved ones home can be helpful to you if you find it necessary to watch your loved one. There are also some things about cameras that might be drawbacks for your situation. Here are some reasons to make you think twice about using cameras.

• Lack of privacy. Your loved one might be in a vulnerable state at this time in their life. One thing they might not want is to be watched all the time. This also goes for the aide taking care of your loved one. They want your that they are going to do their job the right way. If you install cameras in your loved one’s home, the aide might think that you don’t trust them. Another problem with this is if you didn’t get permission from the aide to watch them. If they find out at a later date that you have been watching them all day on a camera, they can get mad.
• Technical difficulties. Cameras might sound like an easy thing to install in a home, but they are not always easy to keep up with. The cameras might not always be working and it can be hard to fix or cost a lot to replace these cameras. It might not be worth it in the long run if they are not going to run correctly all the time.

Conclusion

The use of cameras to watch a home health aide and your loved one can be a good thing or a bad thing. This will depend on what you think of the situation. You can find many stories of home health aides caught in the wrong over a camera system. This could be beneficial to you if you suspect that your loved one is not treated correctly. You should use the list of these pros and cons to help you decide if this is something you want to consider using. You should also consider talking to your loved one about installing cameras before you do so.