What I Learned while Finding a Caregiver for My Dad

Senior Care in Plano, TX – One Daughter’s Story of Helping Her Father Find the Right Home Care Provider

My father is not the easiest person to shop for. In fact, most of his birthdays and even Christmas have resulted in me and my sisters buying him gift cards to Home Depot and Best Buy. It’s not that we want to be cheap or easy, it’s just that he is very specific about the things he wants. When it came to finding the right caregiver for him, I was almost mortified to even try to start the process.

The last thing I wanted was to hire the wrong home care provider and have him turn around and accuse me of not getting a person he could get along with. I talked to my sisters about this and even discussed it with some friends who had a little bit of experience hiring home care providers for their loved ones. They helped me come up with a number of tips that made a big difference in the end.

First, I had to find somebody who is experienced.

Experience certainly does matter when it comes to home care providers. I was told that even somebody who had never been a caregiver for an elderly patient before can certainly do a great job, but when you are dealing with somebody who is very particular about the things and people around them, experience will make a difference. Someone who doesn’t have experience as a caregiver may not know the best strategies to work with the patient.

Second, I needed to find somebody with integrity.

Hiring a caregiver for an elderly loved one means that they are going to be coming to your loved one’s house. You want to be able to trust that caregiver with them. There are numerous news reports about people committing fraud, stealing from patients, and even abusing them. The more I researched this, the more I learned that those stories are extremely rare when you consider how many millions of people rely on home care providers.

Still, doing a bit of background research is the best way to help ensure that the caregiver you hire has integrity and is honest.

Third, I had to discuss these prospects with my father.

If you want to hire the best caregiver for your loved one, like I did for my father, the best thing you can do is sit down and talk to them about it. Find out what they are looking for. I would’ve assumed that my father would want a male caregiver. It turned out that he would’ve been more comfortable with a female, especially when it came to getting assistance in and out of the shower.

These were three of the tips that made a difference for me when it came time to hire a caregiver for my father.