Survivor101

Anyone?

I had a rep from respercare (sp?) (a friend of a friend), who had also been a director of a nursing home in the past, tell us that it was $8.50 per hour and that it could be for up to 16 hours a day.

We just signed a caregivers agreement the other day and the lawyer told us and put in writing that it is $17 an hour. Of course that seems ludicrous to us, but it is in writing.

I guess I should have started from the beginning.

We've been taking care of my mother (who has alzheimer's) in our home for over 2 years for approx $3.00 an hour. This is being paid to us from her account from my brother who is power of attorney.

Mom had very little money (and only had this money after selling her small home). Family wanted her to be immediately placed in a nursing home after daddy passed, but we said no way, and she came to live with us.

We get NO assistance from family and after talking to our friend was told that services (adult day care specifically) through medicaid (paying for 3 /8 hour adult day care visits) was available for her but only if she had under $2000.00. She also told us that we could pay down her money since we should have received more in the way of compensation for taking care of her.

With this in mind we started asking questions and it ended with us going to a lawyer. The lawyer says it is illegal to back pay and that we should have had a caregivers agreement all along. That medicaid can deny her services even when she gets to the $2000 income level because we didn't have the agreement to begin with. That seems odd to us because we had a verbal with my brother, took good care of mom, and got very little ... but you can't buck the system I guess.

Anyway we decided to go ahead and do the caregivers agreement as of yesterday. But now what she told us seems odd to us.

I mean, she is saying that medicaid will not allow my brother to back pay us to pay down her money to get services, but will allow us now to charge $17 per hour for her care, (but not to use 24 hours she said).

One last thing.

The thing that has us concerned now, is that the lawyer says that because we did not have a caregivers agreement from the beginning, that medicaid (when she is able to apply for it) has the right to look back over the last 5 years and could deny her benefits (a penalty which would delay her from getting benefits for 7 months) because we didn't have that agreement.

Again, I find that odd since we only were receiving about $3 per hour and the lawyer is now telling us we can charge up to $17.

Thanks in advance,
D :-)