Family Caregiver or Hire – What Are the Considerations?
Deciding when or whether to give up doing tasks on your own or hiring someone or an agency employing someone to do it for you is one of the most unrecognized stressful activities that we are called upon to accomplish on an almost daily basis. According to Canby assisted living and memory care senior living facility, this becomes especially relevant when considering whether to hire caregivers or try to plow through on your own.
Remembering back to the days when I was married, as I recall my husband dutifully attempted to change the oil on our car a number of times. Each time the car ran worse than the time before but I did not have the heart to raise the issue. It can be somewhat like this with caregiving. When Mom or Dad needs assistance it is tough to tell when and how much and whether things are getting better with our help and we do not want to concede that it is beyond our abilities. This is especially true when the tasks seem like something we should be able to do on a day-to-day basis.
We can console ourselves with the idea that a crisis is a one time event or that if we just hang in there we will get used to it. Sometimes conditions do improve and it is a one time or infrequent event and we can settle back into daily living but sometimes we have to have a conversation with ourselves recognizing when things are too much. This self-conversation is complicated by a number of factors including, not the least, the following.
Money. Cost of outside providers might cause you to hesitate. This is not unreasonable but should not necessarily end the conversation. Just as you may not know all the answers on the best techniques for caregiving, you might not have considered all the possibilities for help either. One of the factors that our office considers is what help is available – either through government aid or by pooling family resources – to provide the help. Another factor we consider is how realistic are the plans both for outside caregiving and for home care by family also taking finances into account.
Guilt. Your parents or your family may have the money to provide outside care but, if you have been the caregiver, guilt can play a major role against deciding to allow someone else to come in.
Inertia. Once you begin down a road it may be difficult both for you and your family to reverse gears and try something different. They may think it always worked this way.
Caregiving Preferences. Many spouses only want their spouse to care for them or their daughter or their son or their daughter in law. Parents have fired caregivers for the sole reason they did not want a stranger in their home.
Here are some considerations in favor of hiring outside caregivers and agencies.
Money. In looking at the money equation, you need to also consider the personal cost to yourself if you are an adult child. If jobs can be divided so that you do not have to give up your own employment (and thereby impoverish yourself), it can make good financial sense to hire a caregiver or an agency to handle jobs – even jobs you could easily handle yourself such as taking Mom to the doctor’s or simple meal preparation and monitoring for medications.
Capacity. Twenty years ago the dividing line between staying at home and moving to skilled nursing was often whether a person suffered from dementia with relatively little help at home. Now, more often, the distinction is whether it takes more than one person to lift or attend to the person who needs care. There can come a time when you need to decide either on extensive help at home or a move to skilled nursing or assisted living with backup.
Your Own Health. Statistically it has been said that one in three caregivers dies before the person needing care. If caregiving is destroying your own health and well-being, consider how far you can go both for yourself and your family member.
Caution. Finally, if are deciding between an agency and direct employment recognize that payment “under the table” is a problem not just for tax but for benefits purposes. You may need help to sort this out.
About the Author Janet Colliton
Esquire, Colliton Law Associates, P.C. Janet Colliton has practiced law for over 38 years, 37 of them in Chester County, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. Her practice, Colliton Law Associates, PC, is limited to elder law, Medicaid, including advice, applications and appeals, and other benefits planning including Veterans benefits, life care and special needs planning, guardianships, retirement, and estate planning and administration.