You’re in the prime of your life with a thriving career and growing family. Life may be a little hectic, but you’re finally starting to get the hang of things. Suddenly, your parents begin to decline and need additional assistance to remain home. It’s unrealistic to believe that you can stop your life to be that full time extra assistance that your loved ones need. So how can we manage it all?
Home care agencies offer help in your loved ones most challenging time of need. Professional caregivers are there to help cook, clean, run errands, and provide care when you just don’t have the time to provide help on your own. So, what do you look for when selecting the right home care agency? Here are a few tips on choosing the right home care agency
1. Take Recommendations
There are a lot of options out there when it comes to home care agencies. In the past few years there have been hundreds of agencies that have been established. Some of these agencies are excellent while others are unlicensed, unqualified, and all around underdeveloped. The best way to ensure that you’re making the right choice in home care is to ask around for recommendations. All agencies will tell you that they offer excellent service from qualified caregivers, but the best way to know for sure is to ask around. An agency with great glowing recommendations will provide great care.
2. Assess Your Needs
Knowing your needs can save you a ton of time and money. Assessing your needs can be the difference between a declining loved one and one on the road to recovery. Whether you’re in need of a caregiver to do small errands or a trained caregiver to help your loved with activities of daily living and care services understanding your needs is most important. What does your loved one need help with? What can they do on their own? What is not being done that needs to be? Just a few questions to ask when assessing exactly what’s needed.
3. Make Note of Offered Services
Some home care agencies offer special services that are tailored to specific needs. For instance, Inspire Care & Support Services offers transitional services to those that transition home from the hospital or rehab or into a new home as well as concierge services that help your loved one make educated choices of care providers. Knowing what an agency offers helps you weed out those that don’t offer what you need to choose the perfect agency for your loved one.
4. Check the Reputation
You can’t always trust the reviews on an agency’s website! Look around in Facebook groups, Nextdoor reviews, google, or yelp. Researching the reputation of your selected list of home care agencies helps you see what the community is really saying. If you want to make the best decision for your loved one, its important to ensure that you do your due diligence to find as much background information prior to your decision. This can be a life-or-death decision!
5. Look Into Staff Qualifications
Are you getting a qualified caregiver or just the son or daughter of a nurse or CNA? These are the things that you want to lookout for. Does the agency provide skills training for their caregivers or are they put through orientation and set out on their way? A qualified agency provides not only extensive training with annual reeducation but also qualified professionals to provide on the job training and assistance as needs continue to arise.
6. Caregiver Availability
The pandemic shifted the workforce significantly. Companies that were once staffed with quality caregivers may now be struggling to fill all shifts. When researching home care agencies for your loved ones, be sure to ask about the availability and turnover of their caregivers. When caring for your loved one you want to ensure there is a continuity of care so that your loved one can adjust comfortably. This is impossible with an organization that does not have enough available caregivers to staff your assignment.
7. Know Your Budget
Home care can be pricy. Not only are you paying for your services, but the caregiver as well. This means that you are going to want to know and stay within your personal budget, so you don’t go for broke. Medicare and Medicaid can help supplement the costs of care for your loved one as well as long term care insurance plans. If your loved one has any of these benefits it is important to know which ones, how to activate them, and what additional resources your loved one has available to them.
8. Monitor Satisfaction
How satisfied are clients after having utilized an agency’s services? Was it a great experience or less favorable? Pay attention to the statements that others have made about the quality of care they received from their agency. This is firsthand experience of how your loved one is more than likely to be treated.
No one expects to need assistance with daily tasks, but when the day comes it’s refreshing to know that there are agencies out there that provide quality services and resources to ensure the safety and security of your loved ones. A little researching on the front end saves a lot of money and heartache in the long run. For more information on choosing the right care organization for you or your loved one please contact Inspire Care & Support Services for geriatric care management services at 219-732-2509.