If you are reading this, there is a good chance that you are already feeling a little overwhelmed. Perhaps you have experienced an injury in the workplace, and are being discharged from acute care or a rehabilitation facility, and now you will need some assistance as you continue to recuperate at home. Or perhaps a special senior in your life is finding daily tasks challenging, and you are considering bringing in help for them. However you came to find yourself seeking a home care agency, there is likely a degree of anxiety and stress related to this decision.
We are here to help. In this series we will break down ten critical factors to keep in mind as you navigate what could be your first foray into finding quality care for yourself or your loved one. When you don’t know what you don’t know, it not only compounds a sense of anxiety and overwhelm, but it makes it nearly impossible to know if you’ve made the best decision. Knowing what to look for in a quality home care solution is crucial in your quest to find the best home care solution for you or your loved one. Let’s dive in. Here are ten key factors to look for as you research home care agencies.
Reputation
In modern times, we think of reputation as the digital footprint that satisfied and dissatisfied clients leave behind. These are important tools to utilize to their fullest, and you should seek reviews from at least five entities online. These could include Google reviews, Yelp reviews, Better Business Bureau complaints, governmental oversight organizations complaints, and neighborhood forums. But an agency’s true reputation goes far beyond what their Google or Yelp reviews are. Discovering an agency’s reputation will often not come from a digital footprint but rather from the clients, the clients’ families, and from the caregivers who work with that agency day in and day out. Visit the agency office, and chat with family members or clients who may be coming and going. Ask neighbors who have sought home care services who they used, and if they’re happy. Create a spreadsheet, or a list at least, of the agency names with comments you are picking up, and sources of those comments. While you may think you will remember, you will be surprised how helpful it will be to have documented the names and feedback you receive in your research.
Accessibility
Consider the accessibility your home care providers will need for you or your loved one, and assess whether or not that particular agency can provide it. For example, if you have a loved one who lives in a rural area, perhaps thirty or more minutes from the home care agency headquarters, dig to find out about your potential caregivers’ geographic area they will be covering, and how that may affect care for your loved one. Agencies sometimes have to manage staff shortages, and ask their caregivers to stretch across a wide area. If scheduling and staffing are less than ideal, you or your loved one may find that the caregivers are too stretched, increasing the chances that they could be late for a myriad of reasons including traffic, weather, or other client emergencies. Geography matters in choosing home care.
Caregiver Satisfaction
Interview your potential caregiver and ask them how they like their job. This may sound overly simplistic but you would be surprised at how forthcoming caregivers will be in sharing how they are doing- really doing. Ask about their schedule- do they get adequate breaks between clients? Do they get days off, or are they pulling in overtime hours? Are they able to see their own families, or are they feeling frustrated, or worse, bitter, about their work-life balance? Caregiver satisfaction has everything to do with the quality of client care, especially in the home environment. Caregiving is an occupation that calls on all faculties of a person- their compassion and patience, their personal care skills, their physical abilities, their experience, and their energy to execute the aforementioned. An exhausted, run-down, overworked caregiver is a caregiver that cannot provide quality care at the level you likely expect for yourself or your loved one. Find out how the caregivers in a home care agency are really doing, and you will find out a lot about what quality of care you can expect from that agency.
Affordability
As we have touched on, caregiving encompasses many facets and requires full engagement from the caregivers. As such a quality home care agency will understand that they must compensate their caregivers fairly – and competitively – in order to nurture an environment in which caregivers can best perform their roles. Often in this industry, you get what you pay for. Agencies on the lowest end of the pay scale for their caregivers, often receive more complaints and deliver poorer quality care than those offering a higher pay scale. Of course with higher compensation comes higher costs of care for clients. Carefully considering the affordability of each home care agency is an important factor for sustainability and continuity for yourself or your loved one. Short-term care needs will require a different budget from long-term care needs. Frequency and scope of care are key components in calculating what you or your family can afford. Having highlighted the challenges facing home care agencies, rest assured that the best of them pull off this balance quite well. Well-run home care agencies can maintain quality caregivers, while maintaining reasonable rates for clients. Conducting proper research on the financial considerations for home care, provides an additional layer of confidence in your ultimate decision on a home care solution.
Caregiver Skills
When interviewing your potential home care agencies, find out the prerequisites for caregivers, training they receive within or outside of the agency, and dig to find specific qualifications that your potential caregivers may have. Do they have designations, degrees, certifications? Experience in the field? Specific skill sets for your or your loved one’s condition? For example, a home caregiver with experience in memory care can be a huge blessing for a family coping with dementia, while a caregiver with certifications in physical therapy can be a great fit for a client recuperating from a hip replacement. Conduct due diligence on the caregivers’ minimum requirements at each agency, and ask the questions to discover if there are special skills that could be a game changer for you or your family.
Communication
At its most basic function, communication is literally the first and most critical foundation for a successful relationship with a home care agency. Observe how things go from the first phone call to the agency, to setting up an initial consultation, to caregiver interviews. Good communication starts from the top. Did the director personally greet you? Is he/ she welcoming, open to your questions, and accessible? Does the management foster an environment of ongoing communication? How does staff communicate with one another, and how will they communicate with you? Is there overall transparency, such as the availability of FaceTiming for loved ones who want to check in during care visits? Is the staff encouraged to be observant of clients, and to communicate with family members if a health or safety concern arises? Does management quickly and effectively convey concerns or new information to caregivers? Asking pointed questions about how information is shared at every level is a critical step in determining the best home care solution for you.
Safety and Security
By its very nature, home care is an extraordinarily intimate line of work, requiring the utmost trustworthiness and accountability for both the caregiver and the client. Any time the boundary of one’s home and personal living quarters is involved, it can feel very vulnerable for clients to accept help they need. Fully vetting the caregivers coming into the home environment can ease anxieties and build in important layers of confidence for clients. Ask the obvious, and sometimes less obvious questions. How are caregivers screened? Did they undergo a background check, and if so, how comprehensive was it? What excludes a candidate from becoming a caregiver at that home agency, and what is permitted in their record? Knowing how a potential care agency screens, approves, and excludes candidates for employment is a very important piece of your puzzle in choosing a solution for yourself or your family. If a care agency does not meet your own personal standards, keep looking. Feeling and being safe and secure is paramount to a successful home care arrangement.
Scope
Consider carefully what you or your loved one needs, and build a dream job description. This job description may or may not be achievable for a home care agency to provide. For example, if your job description entails handyman/ handy-woman services, such as fixing a leaky sink, your home care agency is likely not going to be able to meet that need. Knowing what you need, and then what the home care agency can meet in your needs, is key to a successful relationship. Being an outstanding home care provider means providing a disciplined and focused set of services. You will appreciate that the caregiver for yourself or your loved one knows exactly how to do what they do, and do it very well. Coming in with clear expectations about what a caregiver will provide, and what they won’t provide, eases stress for all involved. Ask detailed questions about the services that your home care provider can and will provide, and consider augmenting other needs with additional outsourced providers such as dog walkers, handymen, or lawn mowers.
Shared Vision
Your ideal home care agency will come alongside your family in crafting the best plan for the known circumstances. Life can throw us curve balls, but if we work with the facts we have as we discuss care at home, we can come up with a strategy as partners in care. For example, a short-term disability plan will look very different from a memory care plan. Family members moving closer to or farther away from a client can impact the care plan significantly- possibly increasing or decreasing the need for care. Life events such as new health issues for cohabitants with the client, or public health concerns like the pandemic we all have lived through, can impact the plan. Being flexible as needs arise, while aiming to maintain a disciplined strategy for care, is a very important factor. Many families find the need to transition from home care to a facility, or vice versa, throughout the relationship with a home care agency. Open communication about needs, which always place the client’s best interests at the forefront, is essential to keeping an ongoing and accurate plan for each client.
Compatibility
Chemistry is important. Clicking with your agency and with your caregiver will often be an imprecise, inexplicable process but one that brings a huge sense of comfort for clients, families, and caregivers alike. After you have done your diligence in asking these important questions about skills, safety, affordability, and beyond, sometimes the best arrangements are those that simply have the right chemistry. And sometimes, people just don’t click. Don’t give up on a good agency if a caregiver isn’t a perfect match. But also, don’t sit with an uncomfortable situation. You and your loved ones deserve to feel well cared for, and happy about the care, at the same time. At the end of the day, this is really what caregiving is all about- assisting people to have the best experiences in their days. Spending our time in this life feeling as physically well as possible, and as emotionally peaceful and possible, is a uniquely human intersection of needs. Partnering with a quality home care agency, and finding a skilled, compassionate caregiver with whom you or your loved one can feel comfortable, is what this is really all about. We should all be so fortunate as to love the life we live, and to help others do the same. A great home care agency excels in this mission.
