A good senior care service is willing to go above and beyond to help the people that they serve. The last year and change has pushed this concept to a new extreme. COVID-19 and the ensuing pandemic has changed care permanently, and has forced services to take on new roles.
One of those roles is as a stand in for family members.
To be sure, a caregiver is not a replacement for family. In most cases, family provides a sense of love and fulfillment that can never be replicated. Whether it’s parents, children, a spouse, or a friend that’s so close that they’re family, the people that you count as part of your family have a special place in your life and they cannot be replaced.
Senior care isn’t meant to replace family. But during the recent pandemic, caregivers and other nursing home and assisted living employees have had to do a lot more than they normally would. While families were unable to visit their loved ones, caregivers in these homes had a unique role cast upon them, whether they wanted it or not.
This isn’t necessarily intentional. Some family members have found themselves unable to get back into the country or leave their current location since the start of the pandemic, especially early on. At other times, the risk of infection was far too high to warrant visits. Some states and nursing homes have had stricter policies regarding this than others. Overall, it has been hard for seniors residing away from their family to make these normal connections. Staff have all been working way harder than normal to try and fill in these gaps.
In some cases, those that need senior care have never had a good experience with family. While this seems to not be the most common case, it’s undeniable that some people have had trauma and heartbreak within their family and this simply isn’t the edifying and supportive structure that it’s supposed to be.
But really, this is one of the amazing things about good care. A strong caregiver doesn’t go into this line of work because they want to do the bare minimum with little effort. People typically go into senior care because they care about the needs of others and want to help however they can. This has looked a bit unconventional over the last year. But that hasn’t stopped those that truly care about what they do from helping those that need it.
That’s why we pride ourselves so greatly in what we do here at Paradise In-Home Care. We go above and beyond to make sure that we hire only the best caregivers out there, those that really want to help. We provide them with ongoing training to help them keep improving, and then we try to match your family with the person on our team that will help you the most, both from a skills and personality standpoint. It’s not a perfect science by any means, but by trying to match things up just right, we are proud to be able to give your family that close connection that only a true friend can provide.
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