Author

Thomas Wiest

CEO, Aspirience Home Care

Although home care may seem as easy as finding and paying for a caregiver, its challenges can become nightmares for families.

Many families call us for help because they struggle with what type and how much home care they need, how to get their parent to allow a paid caregiver in their home, or how to straighten out past disastrous home care arrangements.

Involving a trusted friend or adviser of a resistant elder can help, but sometimes only the introduction of an outside professional will resolve the problem. For example, during our first visit we often secure a previously refusing parent’s agreement to accept home care.

Families sometimes find a successful care giving match the first time around on their own or through a home care agency. There are numerous resources on finding your own personal care assistant but, sometimes it is best to leave that to a trained professional interviewer such as us.

Even with such tips and their best efforts, however, families often run into a revolving door of caregivers who are the wrong fit for the parent’s needs, personality and behavior. One dishonest or negligent caregiver can be a nightmare for all concerned. The lack of guidance and oversight can cause so much miscommunication and unsatisfactory performance that a family may prematurely decide to place the parent in a care facility. Which is the exact opposite of what home care is intended to do.

Even a home care agency representative may not always have professional experience in the required medical field, and may not accurately assess the client’s care needs and home environment in person or have the right caregiver match for the client’s needs. Our Chief Nursing Officer oversees all client care plans.

A professional care manager’s skills in matching and overseeing caregivers can help a family make successful home care arrangements. For example, 90 percent of caregivers whom we put in place serve our same client for six or more months. The other 10 percent are carefully replaced.

It’s important to know that you will run into pitfalls but, will have resources to help you find the right home care match.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 5:41 am and is filed under Home Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.