Having an elderly member that requires constant care can be very stressful, especially if you have other responsibilities such as work, or children that you also need to care for. There is also the emotional struggle of trying to take good care of your elderly loved one, but not being able to give one hundred percent to any of the responsibilities piling up on you. You don’t have to go through all of this, and you do not even have to put your elderly family member in a nursing home where they might not feel comfortable or as close to you as you would like. You can have ease of mind and ensure that your loved one is cared for by hiring a person to provide the needed care.
Before going into how exactly you can hire a home caregiver, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions to find out what kind of care you need for your elderly family member. For example, you need to find out whether you just need someone to do chores around the home and keep track of a medication schedule that your family member needs to follow, or need someone to keep track of vitals and the medical state of your family member. These questions are going to help you in your subsequent search for a caregiver with the necessary credentials that fit your needs.
Now that you have narrowed down what exactly you want the person you are going to hire to do, you can start searching for them.
Ask for Recommendations
You’d be surprised at how helpful neighbors and friends are in this situation. Chances are, they have an elderly family member of their own who they need a caregiver and thus can help you find ones or at least talk to you about their own experience trying to find a caregiver for their ill or elderly family members. You might even get information about good caregivers that they were working for before.
Look Up Homecare Agencies
While the recommendations might help, and you could even find a caregiver or two that you can hire, one of the easiest ways to hire a caregiver is to do it through a home care agency. A home care agency basically acts as the middleman between you and the caregiver, meaning that they deal with all the different factors that come with being an employer, while you just have to pay them the agreed-upon fee for the services the caregiver provides. You can find local caregivers that fit into your set budget easily through these agencies. A definite plus is that you also don’t have to deal with filing for taxes, employee benefits, and other complicated aspects of being somebody’s employer.
Check Potential Caregivers’ Credentials
If you decide to get a caregiver through an agency, then they are already qualified and eligible to work in your area, however, if you decide to hire a caregiver on your own, then you will need to check his or her credentials thoroughly. This is important because you need to guarantee that they are qualified to do what is required of them and provide proper care for your loved one.
Check References
Having a caregiver provide a couple of references before they are accepted for the job is going to allow you to find out if they are competent or not and whether you want them to care for your elderly family member. Make sure that you get the references’ contact information so that you can check out their validity and find out how the person you are thinking of hiring was doing well in their previous employment or not.
Set Up an Interview Process
Hiring a caregiver on your own means that it can get pretty hectic, so you need to set up an interview process that ensures that you are hiring the perfect fit for your elderly loved one. Try setting up multiple segments of the interview process. For example, have some questions prepared for a phone interview. When the potential caregiver passes that interview, ask them to come over for a face-to-face interview in which you can personally check whether they are what you are looking for, and more importantly, checking whether the person that they are going to be taking care of is comfortable around them or not.
The whole point of hiring a caregiver is to ensure that your loved one is cared for and to lessen the load of responsibilities on your shoulder so you need to remember that when you are trying to decide between hiring through an agency or independently. Following these steps, you can ensure that you hire the best possible caregiver for your elderly family member. No matter which route you decide to choose, you need to remember that the comfort and well-being of your elderly family member are the top priority.
