Geneva (Elaine) Nigh

I would like to respond to the last review for Elaine on care.com, by Jack S.

His review was clearly coerced by Elaine. I’ve never even met Jack S.

I am one of the children of the veteran he refers to. He was TOLD by Elaine that we forced her to leave her position. That is absolutely untrue! Elaine was fired by my dad for insubordination. She yelled at and berated him constantly! It’s NO caregiver’s place to “yell at” and “berate” anyone they work for, and certainly not a defenseless disabled veteran, FOR ANY REASON. At no time is that ever ok. If it had been up to me, the very first time, would have been the very last time.

She’s manipulative and extremely vindictive. If you cross her, in any way, she goes out of her way to “get revenge”. Even to the point of calling the police… just to cause trouble for you. My brother was at my dad’s house with his son at home with his mother, because Elaine threatened to get a restraining order against us. She called the police to report that he left his son there unsupervised. When the police showed up at my brother’s house, they asked how old his son was… he’s 10 almost 11. The officer then asked if his son had any kind of mental disorder or disability, to which my brother answered “no, not at all.” … and that he was inside with his mother. The officer asked, “what’s the problem then?” and said “He’s certainly old enough to be at home alone even without his mother there.” She inserts herself into other people’s business, where she has no business being involved at all.

She left before the date she negotiated with my dad because he told her that he often woke up in the morning lying in bed thinking to himself “I’ve got to get rid of her.” She did not live up to the job requirements. I have personally thrown away food that had expired 2 years ago. She also made that expired food available to my dad.

Elaine is a complete liar. She told tons of lies to all my dad’s neighbors and friends about my brother and me. She would tell HIM lies about us, such as we were planning to put him in a nursing home, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. She even had him change door lock codes so that we couldn’t come in to our own dad’s house. It’s one of the signs of elder abuse by a caregiver…”attempting to isolate the elderly from family members.”

Signs of emotional abuse in elderly include:

*** Appearing afraid of their caregiver
*** Appearing depressed or withdrawn
Appearing shyer than usual
Avoiding eye contact
*** Changes in eating or sleeping patterns
Engaging in self-harm
*** Having low self-esteem
*** Isolating from friends and family
*** Lack of eye contact
Rocking back and forth
*** Self-neglect (lack of proper health care)

Note: *** indicates the signs my dad was exhibiting on a regular basis.

All Elaine really wants to do is crafting! She was always needing time off, for days at a time, fully paid as normal of course, for some craft show or another, and never once provided a substitute caregiver. My brother and I both have full time jobs, and families. We simply can’t be there 24 hours a day, so we often have to leave him alone at his house all day long. He’s bound to his powerchair so he can’t reach things in the house like most people can. He has parkinson’s and severe arthritis in virtually every joint, making it near impossible to reach for anything.

At one point, while she was working for my dad, her ex died (older gentleman) and his mother came to Texas … to be here I guess. She’s quite elderly, is my understanding. Elaine took time off from caring for my dad, again fully paid, to go care for her ex’s mother for days at a time… only dropping in to check on my dad now and then. Compassionate, to be sure, but….. she had a RESPONSIBILITY to care for my dad. It’s what she was being paid to do. This went on for a couple months. I don’t begrudge her feeling compassion for this woman, but …. I do begrudge her abandoning my dad to do it.

Then when she saw the writing on the wall, and became fairly certain that her days of caring for my dad were numbered, she had the nerve to try to negotiate a contract with him for her employment in order to save herself from the termination she deserved.

My suggestion for anyone even considering her to care for their family member, is to run a background check on her! I think you’ll find she has something like 15 aliases and several criminal charges that might be of interest to anyone considering hiring her, including assault with bodily injury. We didn’t, until just before she was fired. we were shocked to say the least. Well, we would have been shocked, if we hadn’t seen the true Elaine over the last several weeks of her “caring” for my dad.