I work as an in-home caregiver for an elderly woman. She lives with her adult daughter, who seems to be going through a serious mental health crisis. I am not qualified to diagnose her, but she has been showing signs of severe insomnia, agitation, paranoia, and compulsive cleaning.
The kitchen is part of my work area because I prepare food and do basic care tasks for the elderly woman. Recently, the daughter has been obsessively cleaning and reorganizing the kitchen, so our space overlaps more and more. I am becoming afraid to even make eye contact with her because I worry that anything I say or do might trigger conflict.
Her family has talked about psychiatric hospitalization, but their plan seems unclear and poorly coordinated. I am worried that a family conflict or hospitalization attempt could happen during my work hours. I am not a family member, and I have no role in deciding or arranging hospitalization. I only want to keep myself and the elderly client safe and avoid being pulled into the family’s crisis.
My agency basically told me to “just focus on the elderly client,” but that does not really help me know what to do when the daughter is in the same kitchen, acting unstable, or when family conflict may happen in the home.
For people who have worked in caregiving, eldercare, home health, or mental-health-adjacent situations: how would you set boundaries in this kind of home-care situation? How do I avoid escalating the daughter while still doing my job?