If your parents are elderly and have health issues that require that they get a little extra assistance making it through the day, and family can't cover all the shifts or days that they need assistance, you may want to consider hiring in home nursing care. In home nursing care givers can assist your parents with everyday tasks such as preparing food, taking medication and personal hygiene that may have become a little difficult for them to handle.
#1 Use A Home Care Agency
Don't just put up an advertisement online for a home health care worker. Instead, go through a home care agency. Home care agencies provide a degree of accountability that you can't get if you just hire an individual you find online. Generally, they require that all of their workers have certain levels of education and medical training. They also back-up their workers with liability insurance and will ensure that you always have someone to look out for your parents if their primary caregiver has to take a sick day or calls and cancels for any reason.
Also, when you use a home care agency, you just have to worry about paying the agency. You don't have to worry about paying wages and following employment laws for an independent contractor.
#2 Use Other Services For Non-Health Care Tasks
Second, keep in mind that your in-home nursing care does not need to take care of all of your parent's needs. Focus the in-home nursing care on your parent's health needs, such as giving medication and helping with personal hygiene. You can use other services to get additional tasks done for your parents. For example, there are different companies that now allow you to order groceries online and have them delivered. You may need to do this for your parents, but it can be more affordable than expecting the home health aide to do this task and this type of task may fall outside of their job description. When your parents need transportation to medical appointments, see if their insurance provider will provide transportation or use a car-sharing service. For keeping up their home and doing things like mowing the year, you can use websites such as TaskRabbit and Amazon Home Service that connect you with professionals who can help take care of your parent's home and perform other tasks outside of health care responsibilities that your parents need assistance with.
#3 Develop A Care Plan
Figuring out all the services and assistance that your elderly parents need can be a job in and of itself. You are going to need to manage, set-up and assure that they have the help them need in order to age in place.
You may want to pay for a consultation with an Aging Life Care Professional who can help you develop a care plan for your parents. They can help you find a good home health care agency and help you figure out how to schedule the assistance that your parents need to age in place. If you have the resources, you can also hire one of these professionals to manage your parents care needs full-time which will allow you to just focus on supporting your parents emotionally and being there for them without all the responsibility of being full responsible for their care.
Share