Caregiving Resources

Types of Caregivers

Caregivers provide an important job in today’s society. In fact, without caregivers, we would not be able to care for people with disabilities or our senior citizen population. This can also include those with temporary or even permanent disabilities that require help. Most people when they think of a caregiver they may think that there is just one type of caregiver. This is not correct. There are several types of caregivers that help in different areas of life. Let’s take a look at these.

Agency Caregivers

Agency caregivers are Certified Nursing Assistants or for short (CNA) are also called personal care aides. Personal care aides are not required to have certifications. These types of caregivers may perform duties such as cooking, light housekeeping, transport, and other non-medical duties.

Paying agency caregivers

Typically the person that needs the care pays the agencies out of pocket. However, there are others when qualified can use long-term care insurance that will then reimburse part of the cost of the service. Those on Medicaid can also pay for the care from contracted agencies.

Reliable agency caregiver agency should:

• Do a background check
• Do drug screenings
• Keep training ongoing for staff
• Fill replacement if the caregiver doesn’t show or quits
• Have liability insurance
• Investigate complaints

Family caregivers

Family caregivers account for millions of unpaid caregivers in the country. There are over 40 million caregivers that help seniors over 65 years of age. These caregivers can include the senior’s child, grandchildren, relatives, friends, and even neighbors.

Unlike other types of caregivers, family caregivers are not bound by regulations from the state that paid caregivers are subjected to. This is a two-edge sword that is both good and bad. The family caregivers can do what the loved one asks but unlike paid caregivers, they may not possess the correct tools and know-how for more in-depth caregiving tasks.

There is also the strain of family caregivers not getting paid for all the time and energy it takes to properly and safely care for a loved one or family member. Family caregivers can perform some of these tasks:

• Dispensing medication
• Insulin injections
• Wound care
• Mobility exercises
• Catheter help
• Bed turning
• Mental and social companionship

Home health caregiver

This type of caregiver is insurance-covered care. Home health caregivers offer both occupational and physical therapy, speech therapy, and nursing duties. The patients that can benefit from this service are anyone who has an illness or injury and needs wants to stay in their home to recover.

You can expect to have a caregiver be in the home up to three times a week. What makes this service different then others is that Medicare typically does not allow the home health caregiver to do tasks like cooking or housekeeping. The main role of the home health caregiver is to help the person get better so they no longer need the caregiver.

Senior living caregivers

Senior living caregivers play an extremely important tool in assisted living facilities that help day-to-day functions for a safe and caring environment. This term covers a lot of different housing situations like 55 years and older communities, memory care facilities, and the like.

Caregivers under this umbrella can do anything from medication giving to personal care. They can help with bathing, hygiene, getting dressed, and helping the person get to point A to point B.

Nursing home caregivers

Within this type of care within the home is 24-hours. Simply because of the nature of the person needing help requires around-the-clock care. These types of caregivers will help with everything that is not nursing-related.

Unlike a lot of other types of caregivers, it is easy for a loved one to not have great treatment simply because of the understaffing that happens within nursing homes. The nursing home caregivers will perform tasks like dressing, bathing, help with eating, and other tasks for the patient.

We suggest you really learn who and how your loved one is geeing treated within a nursing home to make sure they are getting adequate and proper care while in the nursing home.

Independent caregivers

Independent caregivers are very common and are used for care by families across the United States. The allure for this method of caregiving is simple. It cost less for the caregiver and the caregiver typically makes more independently than if they worked with an agency.

It should be known that there are risks associated with using independent caregivers. They possess the following issues:

• You need to check references extremely carefully.
• You need to do your homework. Run a criminal background and drug test.
• Have a redundancy plan in place if the caregiver does not show up for work. You should have someone that can help on very short notice.
• Have a plan in place for harassment issues. If any of these accusations make it to court you will need the proper liability insurance to cover the cost.