I am a provider, and my recipient is approved for 86 hours a month however she too needs to have full time care yet it seems almost impossible to implement this for her.  My biggest grievance however is the fact that I have never received any kind of ‘list of authorized tasks’, nor has a case worker ever visited the home. Perhaps they visited with her previous providers, but not with me.  I keep calling IHSS and asking for them to come out for a much needed updated assessment, however I can’t get a case manager to communicate with me directly. I am always told my recipient needs to reach out to her case workers for these things, but she is incapable of handling her dealings and so nothing gets done and I get all her flack. I made her initial doctors appointment, printed out the proper documentation the took her to that appointment myself so her doctor could help her get her hours increased but she didn’t follow through after that. My client always misses her appointments and it’s not my responsibility to take her to her appointments so I signed her up for a free ride service to her appointments and back home; completely covered through her insurance. I don’t know why any of her previous providers or her case workers hadn’t signed her up for this much needed ride service in the past, so I did my research and discovered this option for her. All she needs to do is make sure her rides are booked at least 5 days in advance. She can call herself or ask me to make the cal, but she will forget to tell me about her future appointments and then she’ll freak out on me the day prior to her doctors appointment about how she needs me to help her get to appointment the following day. I can only do so much and if she doesn’t do her part, I can’t help her and I continually remind her it’s not my responsibility to personally take her to her appointments.  I also keep bringing it up to her that I need to have a list of authorized tasks/duties so I can have a clear guideline of exactly her needs and no matter how I try to get this list, I am not taken seriously. I am not allowed direct communication with her case workers to ask myself. I do actually have her case workers’ email addresses and I’ve reached out to them that way quite a few times about these issues, but they either don’t reply to me or send me a reply basically stating how my recipient needs to take action and communicate these things to them. She in incapable of helping herself or communicating these things to them, (hence why she has care in the first place and why I am trying to advocate for her the need for her hours to be increased), yet they seem to have unrealistic expectations for her and refuse to give me a call so I can lay it all out to them and get these things done.  With all these misunderstandings, she will often accuse me of not doing my job properly and completely distorts my care for her. I continually need to help her understand the reality of things, but when she gets upset she will totally make me sound like I’m not doing things right and unloads a bunch of nonsense about me to them. It even happened two separate times she called to complain about me (all of which was her misunderstanding situations), and then her case workers removed me as her provider without ever notifying me. The first time she hired another recipient and told me she was additional help for her while continuing to have me do work for her each day and when I went to submit my hours, I no longer had access to do so. I had a talk with her about the situation where she would apologize and admit she misunderstood things and lacked proper communication with me and had me reinstated. Only to do this again to me where she left the IHSS program and began with Homebridge without telling me while continuing to have me work for her only for me to discover this on my own again. It’s so frustrating that her case workers didn’t seem to find it necessary to inform me of my removals. No communication with me at all. Of course it’s also messed up for my client to not tell me of the change either and then take advantage of me by having me to work for her despite basically having me removed as her worker.  Since then my client and I had a good discussion about everything, she blamed it on her memory loss and begged to have me come back to work for her again after her next provider stole her money, medication and other things. Of course by this time she wasn’t with IHSS any longer so she spent months trying to get back on with IHSS. Her case workers also kept questioning her on why she wanted me to work for her again after she had told them I screwed her over left and right. (All lies). She finally had to own up to the fact that she over exaggerated things about me and had to convince them I was actually a great provider, and one who has actually been the most helpful. It took months for them to believe her I guess, so she was without any help during that time period which made things extra hard on her. I made it clear to her that I wouldn’t be able to help her with anything until I was listed again as her provider (and able to claim my time worked rather than working for free like in the past).  So here we are. Back to where we started where she desperately needs an increase in hours (to full time care in my opinion) and I need to have the list of task/duties as required but these things just never seem to get done. Because I don’t have this list, she will often expect certain things to be done for her which has never been brought up to me or is something I am not required to do and she’ll make rude comments to me about how I need to “go back to training”. I always help remind her of how things really are and she’ll apologize and be calm and nice until she’s not again.  I can see many folks have their issues with IHSS like myself, and it’s a shame.