Many families struggle with trying to manage the recruitment, screening, hiring, scheduling and managing of private caregivers for their loved one. A challenging task to say the least and couple that with a very tight labor market during Covid-19 and it almost becomes impossible to manage effectively.
The most important aspect of providing the right care for your aging parent or loved on is making sure you have the right caregivers. Hiring the right caregiver has become more difficult due to the caregiver labor shortage. In order to find the caregiver requires they are fully trained, dependable and offer the needed compassion to provide the highest level of care for your loved one. In order to find that right caregiver it takes a significant investment in recruitment, advertising and then vetting through background checks and reference checks. This takes considerable time and cost in order to make sure you find the right caregiver and once that is complete you have the following issues to deal with:
- Need to manage the schedule of multiple caregivers which often change weekly
- Back-up plan for last minute call out or possible family related issues for caregivers
- Confirm the caregivers have the need General Liability Insurance as well as Workers Compensation and Unemployment Insurance requirements
- Paying the required Employment taxes, fees
- Direct supervision of caregivers to make sure they are meeting your loved ones needs
In some cases, a family can find the right private caregiver and if they address the items noted above they can minimize the challenges. In most cases, it does make sense to work with a premium home care agency that can provide you with the highly qualified caregivers who have been fully vetted, fully insured, W2 employees, directly supervised and who have back up caregivers to address call outs, vacations and emergency issues which are part of the daily process of caregiving.
