Pros
Taking care of people, helping people if you like that, working with elderly people and learned things you couldn't learn from anyone else, kind of flexible hours
Cons
No hands on training, only a video. They forgot to have that class. Said they would have it when "we have enough people for it" and never did. The first person they gave me was a 250lb. woman that was verbally abusive at times and had CDIFF. Thank God I had taken microbiology so I knew about the dangers of things like CDIFF that they threw me into at first with no warnings. They themselves didn't even know the dangers. I didn't know how to transfer people or anything and had to learn on the job. I came across some of the worst people to take care of at times. It was good when you had your regular people that you loved, but if something happened to them, there you would go again going through people that could be really hard to take care of. It make me really anxious. I went way out of my way for people. I missed out on personal things for my patients. They were always calling me to work when people didn't show up. I felt like I was always on call. They didn't appreciate it in the end. I worked 50 hours a week with no overtime pay because this industry was exempt from it for a year and a half(having to have someone else take my kids to school the whole time) just to make their client happy. I thought they were okay people at first, but they fired me when a patient "set me up" to meet my fiance. We kept telling her no, but she kept insisting. We knew it would help her socially because she had no family so we finally agreed. Well since that was against their policy, they fired me. No warning or anything. Even though the lady begged me to let her meet him. Then she still called me several times a day to talk. I really cared about her and couldn't believe they fired me over it. My boyfriend even took his own money and bought some freon for her car because her air conditioner was blowing hot air and I had to take her with me everywhere. They told me I should have told them, but it was a Sunday and they didn't even do anything when I told them my client was suicidal so why would they do anything for an air conditioner? I think they charge way too much to people and there are so many things they can't do like no banking, no bill paying, no handing them medicine out of the bottle even if they can't do it, no toenail trimming, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some. For 18.00 an hour or more they charge people, there's not much they can do. You get a lot of people that have disorders of the brain and are mentally ill.