If you are looking for senior care for an older relative, odds are that you have a lot of questions, especially if you are at an early stage in your search.
What’s the Difference Between In-Home Care and Home Health Care?
There is only a slight difference in the wording between these two types of care, but they are very different. Home health care is care administered by a licensed nurse and focuses on medical care. In-home care is nonmedical in nature. It focuses on needs like meal preparation, dispensing of medications, small chores around the house, bathing and grooming, along with transferring throughout the house.
Both of these types of care fulfill different sets of needs, but as you can probably guess, there are many cases where overlap is necessary. Be sure to consult with a doctor if you are unsure about what kind of care is best for your family.
How are Caregivers Chosen?
The process of hiring a caregiver is an extensive one at Paradise In-Home Care. We conduct background checks on all applicants to ensure that there is no harmful record as a safeguard for our clients. We look at applicants and ask ourselves if this is an individual that we would want caring for our own loved ones. If so, the individual then goes through a thorough training process, is insured, bonded, and covered by worker’s compensation insurance, just in case.
It’s worth pointing out that not all caregiver services have the same process. And not all caregivers are employed–many are independent contractors that are hired by you through a referral agency. These caregivers may not have gone through the same rigorous process that our caregivers have gone through.
How is My Caregiver Chosen?
When we assign a caregiver to an individual, there are a number of criteria that we consider. One, we look at who on the staff is currently available. From this pool, we look at the experience and specialized skillsets of those available. If your loved one has unique needs, we want to ensure that we send someone to help that can thoroughly address them and bring quality care to your family. Next, we look at personalities and ensure that the people that we send to help your family so that there are no tiny clashes here. Our goal is to help your family have the ideal caregiver sent over so that life can run as smoothly and as close to normal is possible.
What’s an ADL?
Insurance companies and others will often refer to ADLs, or activities of daily living. These are the six basic tasks that in-home caregivers assist with. They include grooming, bathing, dressing, eating, mobility, and using the bathroom. You may also hear about IADLs from time to time. These are instrumental activities of daily living, and they are supplemental activities. They might include minor tasks like helping find a movie to watch or a book to read, for example. There is no finite list of these, but they are still important to a high quality of life and caregivers may help out with these, too. A good caregiver takes these things into account.
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