One of the areas in which background checks are becoming increasingly important is the selection and hiring of in-home healthcare workers. A recent online article published by The Provincetown Banner highlights some egregious stories of what can happen when careful background checking isn’t done on in-home healthcare workers.
To illustrate, here’s a quote from the Banner article: “One of the most shocking cases happened just two months ago in Detroit. An aide was supposed to be caring for an 80-year-old woman with dementia. Instead, she was only taking care of herself, allegedly stealing more than $1.5 million from the family that hired her. Not only was the caregiver severely neglecting her client, there was even an outstanding warrant for her arrest – issued well before she got the job.”
This is one of those cases where the agency providing the in-home healthcare worker failed to complete a background check on their employee. Furthermore, the article strongly suggests that agencies providing in-home healthcare workers should have a complete background check done every six months. Quoting again from the article, “Unfortunately, good people turn bad, and bad people can only hide for so long. That’s why ongoing background checks are essential.”
If you’re thinking about hiring an in-home healthcare worker for an elderly parent or relative, it makes perfect sense to hire an outside firm to do a thorough background check on the individual before ever letting him or her in the door!