A MAN with a brain injury had to be got up from bed by a taxi driver after care from an Okehampton company failed to materialise, his family has said.

Jacqui Pyle and her daughter Lizzy arranged respite care for their husband and father Robert at their home near Exbourne on Saturday, November 9, with HomeLife Carers.

However, when mother and daughter returned home at 4pm, they discovered that the carer booked to get Robert up, dressed and breakfasted had not turned up.

‘When we came back on Saturday afternoon it was very clear that no one had been in,’ said Lizzy.

‘I called the HomeLife Carers’ on-call number and was told that someone had been in when in fact they hadn’t. Dad’s breakfast and medication were still on the side.’

Lizzy said she later found out that the taxi driver who came to collect her father to take him to daytime activities at a centre nearby had found him still in bed.

‘The taxi driver had to get him out,’ she said. ‘It was obvious that no one had been in.’

She said the incident was not the first time that carers from HomeLife Carers had not turned up without notice when they were booked to provide care for her father.

He has regular care in the mornings from Monday to Friday and on Sundays with HomeLife Carers, paid for via an intermediary company by the county council.

‘If they cannot send a carer because of illness or are short-staffed then they don’t let you know,’ said Lizzy. ‘They are just not turning up and then use the excuse that they couldn’t get hold of us, but then we have no missed calls.

‘As a client we have noticed that there seems to be a bit of a pattern when the carers are not going to turn up. The rota doesn’t come out to us. Then the staff don’t say “you’re not getting somebody” they say “yes they are on their way” and then they just don’t turn up and we can’t get any straight answers from anyone.’

Her father, once a fit farmer, suffered a brain haemorrhage after a fall back in 1996 and has been disabled ever since.

‘Dad’s disability is primarily a medical disability but he is physically disabled in that he wouldn’t be able to walk very far and you couldn’t leave him by himself for very long,’ said Lizzy. ‘Mum is his full-time carer.’

She said the care from HomeLife Carers each morning was intended to give her mother a break.

Describing her father as ‘like a nine-year-old boy in a grown man’s body’, she said her mother was aware ‘dad can be difficult’. She said she felt some of the care staff sent out were too inexperienced to cope with him.

‘I think they haven’t got a training system so they are sending their employees out to potentially difficult clients with no training whatsover. Sometimes we have someone come in and they don’t know what they are doing through no fault of their own,’ she said.

Max Wurr, a senior spokesperson for HomeLife Carers, said on Monday: ‘We at HomeLife Carers were naturally disappointed to hear that Mr Pyle has not received the high standard of service that he was entitled to expect from us. We have already spoken with his family and will be in contact with them again this week to update them on our investigations and to offer an apology.

‘Whilst recruitment is a challenge for all social care providers, we are not currently experiencing significant staff shortages and we would reassure other people that receive a care service from HomeLife that they should not be concerned about the reliability of their service, which is delivered by staff that have received full training in line with regulatory requirements.’

The most recent Care Quality Commission inspection of HomeLife Carers in Okehampton, published in September 2017 rated the service provided as ‘good’.