yourhomeservesyou.com Blog

As a professional in-home caregiver, your income depends upon your being able to provide care to your clients. If you care for one client, and that client no longer needs your care, you’re out of a job. What if that single client suffers a stroke or a fall, and uncertainty lingers as to the client’s ability to return to the home environment? Do you look for another client, or wait it out while watching your bank account dwindle? What if you find another client and your original client returns home? Do you leave your new client high and dry to return to your old client, who now has no caregivers to return home to? While it’s possible that your original client will continue to pay your normal pay for a week or so just to make sure they have a caregiver when they return home, they may not. It might seem a bit selfish to approach your ailing client or anguished family members to bring your problem- you need an income- to them at that time.

When clients need caregivers, their needs are immediate. When a caregiver is unemployed, the caregivers’ needs are immediate. Having the two coincide is rare. It’s usually that the caregiver needs a client when the client already has a caregiver, or that the client needs a caregiver when the caregiver is occupied with a client. Both the caregiver and the client are looking for security. If the client already has a so-so caregiver, the client may be unwilling to replace them. What if the new caregiver is worse than the old one? What if the new caregiver gets a better offer from someone else? A caregiver with a client is reluctant to leave that client for another. What if the new client doesn’t work out? Will the old client take them back? If the caregiver has “the word out” that they need a client, what if they go to work with the first client who is willing to hire them but then a more attractive client (lives closer to home, pays more, is more pleasant) becomes available a week later? Ethics, loyalty, affection for the client and financial realities are not always aligned.

Quality caregivers are a rare commodity, mediocre caregivers can afford to be so because there is a shortage of in-home caregivers that will be far more acute in coming years. This will coincide with governments being asked to keep expensive promises they can’t afford to keep. It would be a great advantage then, if quality caregivers could care for several clients simultaneously. It would also be a great advantage if clients and could locate and identify quality caregivers who can provide care for multiple clients.

Technology allows us to increase our output, to do more than what we could possibly do without it. Mowing an acre of lawn with scissors can be done, but to get it done in one day you would need an army of people cutting grass with scissors. With a lawnmower, you could cut the same acre of lawn with one person. The lawnmower is technology that allows one person to get more done. Instead of one guard at each of a dozen doors to secure a building, one guard could watch cameras and unlock doors remotely if needed. Again, technology allows one to do the work of many. Why can’t technology allow one quality caregiver to care for multiple clients if there is a technological solution that makes it possible? It can!

Coming soon will be a website where caregivers and clients can connect. Coming soon will be online training for caregivers who want to become certified to use a GrandCare System, to enhance their skills and to help prospective clients to distinguish the quality caregivers from the mediocre ones. Once caregivers obtain certification, they will have access to GrandCare clients nationwide. For more detailed information, contact the author using the link below.

Keeping my promise of full disclosure when I’m discussing a product or service I or my employer offer, the services and equipment discussed will be shortly offered by my employer, NANLOW-DUNN inc. Any questions or comments may be directed to artdunn@yourhomeservesyou.com. www.yourhomeservesyou.com