My mom is in assisted living and I have a suspicion that the staff, or perhaps a resident, is taking her money. I need something that won’t look out of place and isn’t easily disabled, maybe it plays possum when unplugged but has battery backup. Anyone have any advice?
Yes. Absolutely. If someone questioned my staff’s honesty and DIDN’T BRING IT TO MY ATTENTION FIRST, I wouldn’t want them as customers.
Yeah. It would be a crime in my jurisdiction anyway, but nevertheless basically every nursing home administration I worked with (and I have nursing homes in 7 countries as clients) would instantly react massively to a relative doing this.
We would advise them to ban the relative from entering the premises and then discuss if the contract should be cancelled. That very much depends on the individual circumstances - if it is a distant relative who is simply intrusive it’s a different story to a situation when the offender is the main contact for the client, also the expected remaining contract time (in other words how long a patient is expected to live) should be considered.In special circumstances (dying patient) supervised visits of said relative may be considered.
That seems completely reasonable. I, personally, would support such a stance from any care home. If you don’t trust us enough to broach a subject with us I wouldn’t want you as a client.
It is simply an issue of humanity as well - nursing care is an immensely private issue for most people.
Not many adults would want to be filmed when he/she is getting their diapers changed after they soiled themselves accidentally. If you ask most older folks they don’t even want their kids/relatives to be doing that out of shame. Most wouldn’t want their kids/relatives to even be present. (Note: This is highly dependent on the culture, though, I can only speak for Western&Arab clients here)
Now imagine being the patient and not even knowing whether someone is watching. Besides - we often don’t know enough about the actual relationship between the kids and the client. I’ve seen old folks agree to a lot of shit simply because of pressure (“I won’t come and visit you anymore if you don’t sign this”), extortion (“I only bring the grandkids of you wire me amount XY”) or downright abuse.
The later is also an issue: There are perverts all around the net. I know of at least one instance when a hidden camera (in that case placed by nurse) was used to stream nursing situation to a fetish site on the net. Thankfully by sheer luck the whole operation failed spectacularly before any harm was done.
(The nurse placed the cam while the patient was away to dialysis. The patient collapsed there and sadly passed away in hospital. The nurse was unable to retrieve the camera due to being quarantined due to COVID. A relative who was either in IT sec or a LEO-i can’t remember -of the patient removed the belongings and found the camera. Nurse caught themselves on cam when installing the cam and was charged, sentenced to two years on probation, a high fine and banned from ever working in a care job again. The only reason why no actual prison sentence was handed out was the confession which helped in a larger case.)
Damn, that nurse/camera story is truly disgusting - but sadly, like you say, these people do exist. Imagine being an intensely private and reserved person your whole life - then one of your kids decides to film you 24/7. I’d be mortified if that was me.
Just talked to a friend about it - he is head of a nursing home group in Central Europe.
He had multiple cases when they had relatives trying to do that. Funnily enough the main reason cited by the relatives was to stop other relatives from “doing something funny about the will” .
They actually have a policy when they place a hidden camera in cases of alleged property theft - but this is done in conjunction with the client, their relatives (if not the target), sometimes the court and done by a professional company in a way that the actual patient is not part of the picture/not compromised. (And it’s paid for by the facility - they don’t want a rotten apple as well)
That’s seems like a well thought out policy with appropriate checks and balances built in. It would be hard to argue against this being the best of a bad situation.