As Aging Life Care professionals, we find Home Care works best when someone's willing to accept the care, and when the care needs are predictable. This can be difficult and cost-prohibitive, for example, when you're helping someone in the later stages of dementia.
It's one thing if needs include showering, medication reminders once a day, light housekeeping, and meals. That's easy to staff because it's on a routine schedule. It’s when needs are unpredictable that staffing a professional caregiver can be challenging unless you have 24-hour care, and you're covering all your bases. That option can be expensive as well as isolating.
When determining what makes the most sense for a client – home care or assisted living -- we help families look at the whole picture, including home accessibility, costs, as well as a client’s well-being and quality of life.
One of the things that can create challenges for families is getting a consistent, solid care team at home. Unfortunately, we're dealing with staff shortages in every industry and the caregiving industry has been hit particularly hard because of the pandemic.
Getting a good, consistent caregiver that has the right skill level and personality fit takes time. This can involve a lot of work. Sometimes families get frustrated, understandably, when it's not working, not realizing that it can take a lot of patience and persistence.
We tell families that home care doesn't just run itself. Somebody has to oversee it. Someone must be willing to manage caregiving staff. And sometimes that feels like more work to the spouse or the family member and the net gain on that is not enough for them.
It’s also not unusual for the person in your care to outgrown what you can provide at home, especially if they’re living with a progressive condition such as Alzheimer’s, another dementia, or Parkinson’s. Home can become isolating, especially when mobility and transportation become challenging.
An assisted living community can provide life enrichment, social engagement, 24/7 trained caregivers, nourishing meals, thoughtful building design that supports all levels of mobility.
Closing thought from Nicole: Be realistic about what one caregiver in a home can reasonably accomplish. Occasionally, I must advocate on behalf of caregivers because sometimes the client’s expectation is that they're going to do the care, the cooking, the cleaning, and they're going to be the companion and the activity director. And that's a lot of skills wrapped up into just one person; to some extent those are unfair expectations put on caregivers.
Interested in learning how a Care Manager can assist you in finding professional caregivers to support someone in your care? Click here to schedule a free, get-acquainted call with one of our Certified Care Managers.
This podcast is part of a longer conversation between Nicole Amico Kane, Director of Care Management at Aging Wisdom, and Brenda Dodd, Director of Training and Special Projects at Áegis Living. You can view their full conversation by CLICKING HERE.
