Bringing a caregiver into an aging parent’s home is crucial to ensuring the loved one’s safety, comfort, and healthy well-being. It can be an emotional decision, too, deciding between whether to “do it yourself” and become a family caregiver, hire a private aide, or employ a home care agency to place a certified Home Health Aide with Mom or Dad. Here, we examine the advantages of using a professional home care organization vs. family or private caregivers.
Familiarity Is No Substitute for Professionalism
As senior loved ones grow older and become more mentally and physically frail, they often turn to family, friends, or private home care aides for personal care services. WFC is sometimes called into client homes to supplement the care provided by a direct hire or family aide. Increasingly, we are encountering situations where housekeepers are providing caregiver service. Or the direct-hire aide is trusted to take on responsibility for the client’s finances. Or the adult child must sacrifice career or financial opportunities to continue caring for their parent.
It’s natural for the client to go with someone s(he) already knows – the loved one’s adult child, a housekeeper, or an aide that a friend of the family has used. These people are considered trustworthy, familiar to the aging senior, and may, to some degree, already be providing personal care.
However, WFC has encountered situations where the client or even the family caregiver experiences negative consequences:
• The client authorizes the private caregiver to manage household responsibilities, who then perpetrate financial fraud.
• The “trusted” private aide restricts access to the client’s family members.
• For more, see a story posted on LinkedIn by a Midwestern home care agency familiar to WFC – https://www.linkedin.com/posts/martha%27s-hands_cela-elderlawattorney-elderlaw-activity-6968226427703877632-pI9T?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
New York Times recounts stories about family members who experience significant sacrifices by taking on the caregiving responsibilities of their elders – https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/04/science/elderly-work-caregiving.html
The comfort of familiarity is no substitute for the professional services provided by home care agencies like WFC. We must follow government regulations, hire licensed/certified professionals, and have the breadth of connections to recommend the qualified expert to handle any given client situation.
Let’s briefly cover the range of services and connections WFC makes available to our clients. These include:
• Comprehensive approach to providing home care:
• Oversight/supervision of all aspects of the case, ongoing caregiver training, on-call manager 24 hours a day, ready with a back-up if needed, etc.
• Guard rails to prevent elder abuse and financial fraud
• Connections to a network of experts who can address financial, legal, and therapeutic matters
It Takes a Team
We see our clients as ‘complete’ individuals and invest in being involved with their total care and clinical needs. These include handling any physical and medical conditions as they arise. We also contribute significant added value by assisting clients through the tangle of inevitable organizational issues as they age.
• We’ve developed services to meet the different dimensions of care needed for aging seniors: Elder Care, Alzheimer’s & Dementia Care, Care for Degenerative Illnesses and Care for Chronic Disorders.
Notably, we also provide care to our clients’ family members by relieving them of the burden of needing to be on-premise or on-call 24 hours a day / 7 days a week.
For a deeper dive into the scope of our coverage and how we develop personalized home care plans for clients, click on our website:
https://westchesterfam.wpenginepowered.com/about-us/what-is-in-home-care/
And our blog, The Value of In-Home Care Services for Individualized Care:
https://westchesterfam.wpenginepowered.com/the-value-of-in-home-care-services-for-individualized-care/
Keeping an Eye on Potential Elder Abuse
Increasingly, seniors’ reliance on family, friends, direct-hire aides, and others is an opportunity for abuse and fraud. And the types of abuse cover a spectrum of maladies.
Physical abuse: any intended or deliberate use of force is classified as physical abuse against an older person, such as causing physical pain, injury, or impairment.
Neglect: a particular type of elder abuse that can be intentional or unintentional. It is often based on ignorance or denial by the abuser that a senior needs care at all or to what degree the care is needed.
Emotional Abuse: when people speak to or treat older people in ways that result in emotional pain or distress for the senior.
Financial Fraud: unauthorized use of a senior’s funds or property by a caregiver or an outside scam artist.
WFC has written extensively on Elder Abuse and Financial Fraud. For more, click our blogs:
Know the Warning Signs of Elder Abuse
https://westchesterfam.wpenginepowered.com/know-the-warning-signs-of-elder-abuse/
Senior Financial Awareness: Avoiding Scams
https://westchesterfam.wpenginepowered.com/senior-financial-awareness-avoiding-scams-covid/
Our Founder Glenn Lane wrote Protecting Seniors from Financial Scams
https://westchesterfam.wpenginepowered.com/protecting-seniors-from-financial-scams/
The Network Provides
The physical and medical conditions seniors encounter can be fraught with confusion and misperceptions. We routinely deal with these planning tasks and have developed vital partnerships with credentialed resources who know how to manage them responsibly. In our regular dealings with clients, we can contribute meaningful added value by referring them to the right specialists in our professional network.
For the services and client conditions, we deal with, click on:
https://westchesterfam.wpenginepowered.com/help-from-our-professional-network
Additionally, we provide resource guides to our clients and caregivers in their local areas:
Local Resources for Seniors and Caregivers in Westchester County, NY
https://westchesterfam.wpenginepowered.com/resources/ny-local-resources
Local Resources for Seniors and Caregivers in Fairfield County, CT
https://westchesterfam.wpenginepowered.com/resources/ct-local-resources
Every day, WFC strives to create an exceptional care experience for aging loved ones, their families, caregivers, and our community. We believe our services and connections with professional senior care resources set WFC apart from other providers. It’s why we say, “we let family members be family again while we provide the personal care.”
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Westchester Family Care is an independent in-home care provider specializing in making the home a safe and accommodating place for your aging family members, no matter the condition.
We have an extensive network of professionals and issue-specific specialists ready to help you maintain a healthy quality of life.
Contact WFC for an immediate family need or when planning for future needs:
info@westfamilycare.com
(914)223-8073
www.westchesterfamilycare.com