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February 26, 2010
Caregiving requires planning
Options exist to help the elderly and those with disabilities.
SUSAN J. KATZ
Your favorite aunt has fallen, is being discharged from hospital and is in need of home-care support – are you knowledgeable and ready to arrange for reliable and affordable services? Although we may invest for an upcoming simcha, such as a wedding or b’nai mitzvah, not many of us have enough information about caregiving services for the elderly or the disabled.
Some will prefer the social aspects of residential care, while many prefer remaining at home, with their familiar surroundings. The options currently available for home care include a variety of services, from housekeeping to administering medications, and can be arranged by a local health authority, private home-care services or by family members.
Choosing among these options and navigating through them, “Ain’t easy,” according to Ellen Frank, who is a user of home-care services. Frank reports that in the scenario following hospital discharge, the first contact would likely be through a needs assessment with a local health authority. Appropriate caregivers are then provided.
Some drawbacks, however, include the frequent rotation of workers, meaning that routines need to be re-established frequently, and there is a lack of choice of workers. Fortunately, Frank is familiar with Choice in Supports for Independent Living (CSIL), and has been able to choose who she wishes to employ in her own care.
CSIL is an alternative for eligible home-support clients and was developed to give British Columbians with daily personal-care needs more flexibility in managing their home-support services. CSIL employs a “self-managed model of care.” Clients receive funds directly for the purchase of home-support services. They also assume full responsibility for the management, coordination and financial accountability of their services, including recruiting, hiring, training, scheduling and supervising of home-support workers.
There are also private home-care services available locally, such as Drake Medox Health Services and Ace Personnel Domestic Services. According to Diane Anderson, who started Ace Personnel 29 years ago and has served many families in the local Jewish community, the key to good caregiving is, “Finding kind people to care for the elderly, and to keep them out of nursing homes, and stay with their memories and loved ones: they live longer and don’t lapse so quickly.”
Anderson said the Ace placement process involves interviewing the client and then sending five or six resumés of potential caregiver matches to the client from which to choose.
“You’re trusting them with your home and belongings and loved ones. You need reliability,” she said.
Ace assists their workers with their visas and training, and guides their home-care clients with getting the right government assistance through their family doctor. They mainly rely on personal referrals, including from local rabbis. “It’s a win-win,” Anderson said, “the immigrating caregivers become good Canadian citizens, they train, and own businesses, and can eventually bring their families over, and all of the people involved are lovingly cared for.”
Beechwood Caregivers and Nannies Ltd. is a partnership that was started almost one year ago by Wendy Fouks and Edna Gregoire, when Gregoire was about to finish providing care for Fouks’ mother, Ruth, for whom she had cared for 18 years. Gregoire had become a licensed practical nurse specializing in gerontology during that time and, with her knowledge of the work of caregiving combined with Fouks’ business skills, they became partners.
According to Fouks, whose family has been a part of the local Jewish community for nearly 100 years, some of the advantages of home care are the one-to-one service and attention ratio, and the freedom to create personal routines. “Whenever we place somebody and we’re successful, we’re happy.” In an e-mail to the Independent, Fouks wrote that their agency appreciates “how important it is to establish and maintain ongoing relationships between clients and their nannies/caregivers, and the value/necessity of empathy, compassion, communication, a strong work ethic and dedicated approach to caregiving.”
The two women “bring together ... Jewish and Philippine cultures to provide the best of both to give service to those families and individuals in need.”
Often, family members step in and take charge of caregiving. The Canadian Caregivers Coalition (ccc-ccan.ca) is the national voice for the needs and interests of family caregivers. In a report titled, “I Don’t Know,” reflecting the state of many family caregivers, CCC recommends that the federal government act on the growing social trend of family caregiving, by announcing a Canadian Caregiving Strategy that includes: “Safeguarding the health and well-being of family caregivers and increasing the flexibility and availability of respite care; minimizing excessive financial burden placed on family caregivers; enabling access to user-friendly information and education; creating flexible workplace environments that respect caregiving obligations; and investing in caregiving research as a foundation for evidence-informed decision making.
There is a role for all levels of government and sectors of society to support family caregivers. Accordingly, the CCC is asking that a panel of experts be convened to determine a reasonable, coordinated and sustainable plan to establishing support for family caregivers. In the CCC’s opinion, a national strategy would raise awareness of caregiving as a social value, demonstrate the importance placed on that value and serve as a catalyst for action.
The slogan for the CCC, “It’s not if ... it’s when you will be a caregiver,” is a bold reminder that we can create a good life for ourselves and our family members, with some planning and knowledge of the choices available.
Susan J. Katz is a freelance writer, editor and award-winning poet living in Vancouver. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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