5 Essential Elements of Home Care for Seniors

Authored by:  Jessica Fender

Your aging loved ones deserve all the best. And if they want to age in place in their own homes, you should provide them with such an opportunity. You should consider all the options and find the most reliable home care agency in your area.

This article will help you learn more about the essential elements of home care for seniors.

Availability of dedicated services

The vast majority of seniors who opt for home care have specific health issues. To improve the quality of their life, it’s important to provide them with special support.

Therefore, before choosing a home care agency, you should check whether it offers a dedicated service. Depending on the health condition of your aging loved one, you may need to hire a specialist who is an expert in the following areas:

  • Swallow safety
  • Urinary catheter care
  • Fall prevention education
  • Cognition training
  • Functional self-care training
  • Physical therapy after joint replacement
  • Wound care
  • Diabetes management

Qualification and experience

Even if your older family members don’t require any specific medical help, you still shouldn’t hire a random person as a caregiver. Instead, you need to find a trustworthy home care agency that employs workers with relevant experience.

Obviously, home care workers don’t need to have a diploma to assist seniors with basic tasks like eating and bathing. But they still need to have some previous experience to complete these tasks the right way. And most importantly, they must be prepared for the unexpected and know what to do when something goes wrong.

Make sure to ask the in-home care agency the following questions before contracting for services:

  • How do you assess the caregivers’ skills? How do you evaluate their experience level?
  • Do you conduct employee screening?
  • Are caregivers certified in CPR and First Aid?
  • Does your agency provide specialized training for caregivers?

Well, it will take you a few hours to discuss these questions with in-home care agencies. But in the end, you will find professionals you can entrust your aging family members with.

Emotional support

Your aging loved ones need something more than just physical support. They need to have someone around who can support them emotionally. It must be a cheerful, friendly, easy-going person who shares the same interests as your loved one does.

Let’s say your father is a writer and he wants to write a novel. But unfortunately, he finds typing difficult because of a decline in his motor skills. You need to find someone who can help your father to bring his ideas to life. It can be a professional academic writer from GetGoodGrade or even a high school student who has outstanding writing skills. If you hire a caregiver with relevant background, your beloved seniors will appreciate that a lot.

Affordability

Some people wrongly believe that if they contract the most expensive home care agency, they will get the best services. But unfortunately, in real life, a high price is not always a guarantee of high quality.

We highly encourage you to read customer reviews online and ask agencies additional questions before making a final choice and signing a written service agreement. Contact an agency to find out whether it has an established procedure for resolving complaints and whether it evaluates the quality of the care provided.

Well, it might be challenging for you to compare fees offered by different agencies because they include different sets of services. For instance, some agencies charge fees for caregiver drive time and supervisory visits, while others do not.

Also, it’s worth mentioning that some service providers require you to pay for a minimum number of hours per visit. For instance, if a written service agreement states that the minimum number of hours per visit is four, you will have to pay a four-hour fee for three- and two-hour-long visits.

Thus, you should always check the fees, cancellation policies, and other charges upfront.

Final words

Not all home care agencies are worth your trust, so you should double-check everything before hiring a caregiver. We hope this article has helped you understand the key aspects of home care for seniors.

For more information regarding how to find qualified home care services in Arizona, the best resource is the Arizona In-Home Care Association. Please go to https://AZNHA.org for details.

Author’s bio. Jessica Fender is a professional writer and educational blogger at Writerscapital. Jessica enjoys sharing her ideas to make writing and learning fun.

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