What if your loved one does not like the caregiver?

Ask your Care Planner is a series where a Right at Home Care Planner dives into some of the questions our clients and their families ask. If you would like to submit your own questions or speak to a Care Planner please call us at 1-855-983-4663 or use the contact us form. Today’s question comes from Susan in Windsor.

What if your loved one does not like the caregiver?

Have no fear, Susan! It is not unusual to be concerned about this. In fact, many of our client families admit to this being such a worry that it may be a barrier to taking the first step to supportive care services.

We are all individuals with different personalities and life experiences. Not all personalities match. Sometimes we can predict compatibility, and sometimes we surprise ourselves and find an unlikely match that worked wonderfully! Like personal relationships, professional relationships also take time to grow. It takes time and opportunity to learn the needs, wants, preferences and unique attributes of the person we are caring for.

One of the main considerations in making your loved one’s experience a positive one, is to ensure there is a professional person there to facilitate the best caregiver complement for your loved one. Whether you choose Right at Home for your care needs, or have another Care Provider, ensure there is always a Care Planner who gets to know your loved one’s history and what unique likes and needs they have. All our Right at Home client families have their own personal Right at Home Care Planner. Our Care Planners are highly specialized and use their experience, intuition, knowledge and relationship with their clients and care staff to find the best caregivers for your loved one.

A second consideration is ensuring there is a small and consistent Care Team for your loved one, and not a revolving door of caregivers! A constant parade of different faces and different people entering and leaving a home day in and day out can be very confusing, disconcerting and frustrating for the person requiring support (as well as their family). Lack of consistency with caregivers makes it difficult to form a therapeutic bond or connection with a caregiver. Our Care Planners are there to hand-select the Care Team members, the same faces working with your loved one day in and out. The consistency of a Care Team allows for trust and confidence to build. As trust and confidence builds, a very positive, healthy and therapeutic relationship is created that brings a sense of confidence, security and most importantly safety to the person receiving care.

Lastly, ensure things can be corrected, if they do not seem to be going in the right direction! A Right at Home Care Planner will not judge you on questioning “fit”, or by bringing up that the caregiver is not liked by your loved one. They will listen to your concerns, discuss a plan, and introduce the right caregiver. Our Right at Home Care Planner is always there to make things right, no matter the situation. Ensure any provider you choose has these commitments.

Our goal at Right at Home is to ensure we are providing a meaningful, professional and healthy care relationship with our clients. We strive to ensure our supportive care services are the right services that will change with the client as the needs increase or decrease, and are tailored to the client’s unique personality and needs. Remembering there is a person behind the disease or condition, and ensuring they are acknowledged and supported as an individual is an essential part of getting it right. Whether it is a person struggling with a Dementia-type diagnosis, a person with mobility challenges, or someone battling a terminal disease, each person is unique, each care situation is unique and quite frankly, each day is unique. The client, the family, the Care planner and the caregivers all hold key roles in the care relationship, one based on respect and trust that grows in time and is ever-changing and evolving throughout the care journey.

Why Right at Home?

• Over 20 years of experience. Right at Home has been providing award winning customized senior care and home care for over 20 years.
• YOUR Caregivers are all part of YOUR Care Team. This means that there is no revolving door of Personal Support Workers and Nurses. With the help of your Care Planner, you choose and get to know them. This leads to an level of care for your loved one that is unsurpassed in our industry.
• Working with government support. Your Care Planner will work to help you find the government supports you are eligible for (if you would like them) and then work to find a solution for the care needs that go above what government and family can do. We will also work around the government care plan so that we are enhancing it.

We help in home, wherever home is to you.

Our Caregivers are always out in the community visiting homes, Retirement Residences, Long Term Care (LTC), hospices and hospitals.