Home Care Habits - Is Your Family Suffering?
Hiring a private duty home care company to assist in your home can be a big decision. Finding an agency that has the right mix of caregiver personality, skills, trust and reliability are all important and once you find this mix, you may start to overlook key indicators of compromised care.
- My Caregiver is Late… Not always late, but there are those times where she is 10, 15, 20 minutes late. I just can’t rely on them.
- The caregiver you are sending for my father looks extremely stressed out and distant. Dad is beginning to worry about her.
- Every time I turn around, my caregiver is on his cell phone. I don’t want to pay for that.
- I found out two days later that my dad fell in the bathroom. Why wasn’t I informed, I want to be the first to know.
- The caregiver, who works overnight for us, sleeps every night. I need someone who will be awake all night.
As a home care agency agency, we often find that once our clients have a caregiver for a length of time, a bond is created that becomes very special. Common comments from our clients include “I don’t know what mom would do without Betty” or “We were very concerned with dad accepting having someone in his home. Now, dad will have no one other than Mary!”
As this relationship between your loved one and the caregiver continues to grow, both good and bad habits can begin to form. Good habits such as knowing which food and drinks to choose or how a person wants to be addressed strengthen that bond. Caregivers mean well however it is the agencies responsibility to keep the relationship between the caregiver and client both professional and safe. Bad habits as those outlined above can develop.
If you are feeling, or have had these thoughts about your home care agency, I would encourage you to make a phone call to the company or visit their office. Waiting and letting time pass usually results in frustration and sometimes becoming fed up altogether.
All caregiving situations have the potential to experience these bad habits. Many agencies also experience situations that require office or administrator oversight. Company oversight should be one of the reasons you hired an agency over a private individual. The key to the best of the best agencies like Seniors Home Care is how quickly and appropriately the agency deals with these situations.
For advice or solutions to your concerns, feel free to contact me at 314-962-2666 or on our contact page.
Join the Discussion
Seniors Home Care reserves the right to remove anything deemed inappropriate, off-topic or otherwise questionable; however, we have no responsibility to do so.
Post Tags
Advocacy and Education and Case Management