Hales Group Limited

I want to be fair about this company. So I can honestly say the staff that have come to my home 3 times a day to care for my mother have been wonderful.

Caring, efficient and simply great. Claire, Jasmin and al the other ladies like Betty.

Hales, you have some wonderful employees who are a credit to your company. The way you run things however is not so good.

You have been caring for my mother for several months and my mother is sad knowing She will not see your fabulous care staff again. ... We have no option to swap to another care provider because you are unable to turn up on a regular basis at the times you promised to.

Today the 8.30am scheduled appointment has arrived at 11.

45am. My 85 year old mother who is mentally very fit is crying in her bed laying in her soiled underwear.

She refuses to eat in bed so has not eaten. Luckily being Sunday She has not had to cancel her physiotherapy appointment or hair appointment as She has in the past several times due to your inability to arrive anywhere near the times you agreed too.

The 30mins leeway for the morning visits are at best delusional. I know North Norfolk is a new area you have taken over however yesterday you arrived at 10.

30am, The day before luckily the care lady saw you had scheduled my mother to be visited at after 10am and came at 9am. The day before that was 10.

15am. I never get a phone call to advise me the visit will be late.

In fact almost every time I ring to ask where the care staff are. I am told they are scheduled to arrive at a time much later than was agreed.

Now in Hales defense Initially we did say Male and Female care staff would be ok. That was because my mother was cared for in hospital by male nurses and She was herself once a Nurse.

However after noticing my mother was upset after having a male career get her ready in the morning. My mother disclosed She had been raped as a young 10 year old girl and simply could not cope with a male care person washing her and dealing with intimate issues.

Unfortunately my father died a few months ago and he had cared for her until his death. A hospital setting being very different from being naked alone in her bedroom with a man and my father no longer around.

So I obviously informed Hales that we could no longer have male care staff attend to my mother. She has had two heart operations and the stress was not good for her! So yes we did change that, which obviously did effect your roster and reduced the number of staff that could attend.

I still thought a company the size of Hales with a majority female staff could cope with this. I did ask Hales to refer my mother back for another company to be allocated if they could not cope with the three agreed daily visits.

In fact 95% of evening and lunch visits do come within 45 mins of the agreed times. The morning alas are a different matter.

This is not the odd occasion when things unexpected happen. This is regular planned failures.

23 times in April and May they arrived after 9.30am.

7 times after 10am and 3 times after 11am. We stopped recording the times after we requested moving to another care provider.

So if you are happy leaving your loved parents laying in bed in soiled underwear for hours on end each morning in distress. Hales is the recommended care provider for you.

If you are happy for them to agree a specific time for visits with reasonable leeway. Then to schedule that visit to happen hours later without informing you or giving any explanation of why they have done this.

Hales is for you. If you enjoy the challenge of having to re arrange your daily plans at short notice.

Choose Hales. They will certainly keep you busy! I honestly do hope the next company have care staff as good as Hales, because they are top notch, but I hope the next company are run better.