Smile! You’re on Candid Camera

Many of you remember that funny TV show from the 70’s called Candid Camera. Where they would place cameras in hidden locations and then play practical jokes on people.

It was pretty much all harmless fun. Everyone loved it.

Fast forward to today. Everyone has a camera. YouTube is full of videos of ‘candid camera’ events shot by everyday people.

My high school and college friends joke that ‘thank goodness we went to school in an era before cell phone cameras!’.

When it comes to assisted living homes, cameras and recording devices become an interesting subject.

Assisted living and nursing homes don’t have the most stellar reputations. To put it mildly. Problems with abuse and neglect of residents make the news all the time.

The news does put on stories of wonderful things happening in assisted living homes as well from time to time. However, the abuse and neglect stories seem to capture the headlines more.

Consequently, a lot of families are very suspicious of assisted living facilities when they first put their mother for father in their care.

Our homes are not monitored by security cameras. In 9 years of running my homes I have not felt the need, nor have my caregivers given me reason to monitor the homes.

I just know that as an employee it would make me nervous to have cameras recording all my actions. I would be constantly worried that I am doing something wrong and it would make me feel like my employer doesn’t trust me. I do everything I can to hire good caregivers. Nearly all my caregivers come from recommendations from my current caregivers.

It’s important to me to have them feel like they are part of my family. That way they can give the impression to the residents that they are part of our family as well.

We have worked with families to put video monitors in individual residents’ rooms. Especially when they were a risk for falling out of bed. Or waking up in the middle of the night to wander and possibly fall.

Whatever we can do to enhance safety for our residents. We are all for that.

Recently we’ve had an incident, or series of incidents where a family member is dissatisfied with our care for their loved one.

The rest of the family is totally satisfied with our care. The resident in question is over 90 years-old and just received a totally clean bill of health from their cardiologist. He even said ‘whatever you’re doing, please keep it up!’ She walks around our home singing and is a great worker of Sudoku and jigsaw puzzles.

We just had a large birthday party for the resident last month.

Nevertheless the family member is not satisfied. Whenever they come in the home these days (their loved one has been with us for several years), they have the camera rolling.

They have opened investigations on our home twice in the last couple of months with Adult Protective Services (APS).

Both times APS closed the investigations saying they found no evidence of abuse or neglect.

We are working with our lawyer to determine the best way to handle this situation. By law in Arizona, the family member can film the resident.

This may sound like we have something to hide. We really don’t. We’re happy to have families film in our homes as long as they respect the privacy of others. It’s just that when people use cameras just to find something wrong, it doesn’t promote a good atmosphere.

I’m hoping to have this resolved amicably. And I wanted to pass it along to let you know that most assisted living businesses really want the best for your loved ones. Even though there are definitely some bad apples that need to be shut down.

Just give us a chance. A good relationship with your assisted living provider makes the whole experience better. As I tell all my families, if we’re doing something wrong, please let us know and give us a chance to fix it. If we don’t fix it, by all means go to the authorities.