Tough Decision- Significant Consequences!
The quest to find just the right caregiver for your elder: it is a tough decision and can have a wide range of outcomes.
Good outcomes can be the result of due diligence and hard work on the part of the family, and some are just good luck.
So where do you start and how, ultimately, do you make the final decision from all your candidates? The launch of your search is probably the easiest step as there are informative and supportive sites such as eldercare.com that provide you with contacts and possible candidates. From this point, information gathering needs to be done, interviews with the most appropriate candidates need to be arranged, finally, a decision needs to be made.
Everyone looking for a caregiver for someone they love should have a well defined image of the type of person that they are looking for. This seems like an easy task, but it is complicated. There are so many qualities that are appealing and seem necessary in a great caregiver, but the reality is, that you do have to have a realistic list.
The best way to organize your thinking to to write things down, first in a PMI (a list of pluses, minuses and important facts) regarding your thinking and second, a set of interview questions that reflect this analysis.
Everyone will have their own set of criteria for hiring as each situation and each elder needing care is unique. Personally, I require a few 'must haves'. Pluses would include dependable and honest, minuses would be inflexible and harsh, and under important I would clearly need a caregiver that showed gentle, well developed social skills and empathy.
The wonderful situation of a successful hire is that you feel comfortable leaving your senior, and that this feeling only increases over time. Your elder's caregiver will increasingly assist not only out of a sense of duty, but out of affection. Nirvana!
