Tag: #ElderlyHomeCare

All About Domiciliary Care Services

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Domiciliary care is healthcare service provided to patients who while staying indoors, need attention. It could be their home, office, or any location where they need to be cared for. Usually, this care involves a patient’s day-to-day needs and sits at the top of the list of the nation’s favourite personal home care services.

Domiciliary care helps patients with a wide range of everyday tasks. Ranging from 30 minutes to several hours per day, such care includes:

  • Routine tasks
  • Managing medication
  • Mobilising patients in and around their residence
  • Running errands
  • Taking the patient to the doctor’s, and shopping
  • Meal preparation if asked for
  • Personal and continence care
  • Clinical care such as stoma and catheter management along with PEG feeding

    Domiciliary care relates to live-in care, in which patients look for a source of companionship. The term “domiciliary” hails from the Latin word “Domus,” which means “home.” This type of care varies from patient to patient. It is considered a form of social care that brings with it a feeling of comfort, safety, and respect – all that the elderly are seeking at this stage of life. Care professionals are trained so that, aside from performing their primary duties, they provide emotional support, encouragement, friendship, and reassurance.

Benefits of Home Domiciliary Care Services

If you choose domiciliary care for your seniors or anyone at home, it will allow you and your family the following benefits.

  1. One-on-one care

We must say that home care workers have upped the game in today’s healthcare system. These workers appear at the patient’s home to give them person-centred care in exchange for money. Domiciliary care is done individually, knowing that every person may have unique medical needs.

  1. Stability

Like we mentioned above, domiciliary care is designed for people who need help at home. Not only does it allow patients to regain a sense of normalcy, it provides personalised care and comfort as well. Opt for or recommend domiciliary care if a loved one or a person you know of is showing signs of dementia (memory loss), joint injury, etc.

  1. Independence

The foremost benefit of hiring domiciliary care services is that it allows the senior citizen to recover their sense of freedom, for which they may have been yearning. Although this care is very personal, it’s the opportunity to do things without relying on a busy relative or loved one such as eating, walking, bathing, etc.

  1. Flexible

Unlike other forms of care, domiciliary care services have flexible hours. It’s the right solution for the patient who may need the service at different hours, varying from day to day.

  1. Affordability

When you choose domiciliary care services, you only pay for the care you’ve asked for. Studies show that eight hours or less per day of domiciliary care is far less expensive than choosing a healthcare facility. Home carers charge by the day instead of by the hour, as well.

Find the Best Domiciliary Care Provider in Birmingham

If you are looking for quality domiciliary care in your area or what’s also called live-in service, call Care4U today.

6 Advantages of Care at Home

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Home care or domiciliary care indicates different types of care that a patient can receive at home. Home care providers, also known as condition lead care providers, like Carer4U, offer various care programs catering to individual needs. Home care varies according to the patient, and includes personal care, doctor care, respite or companionship care, and even intensified care for patients with chronic illnesses like dementia.

Home care is suitable for anyone looking for care provided at home. This kind of care allows you to live independently and provides emotional support delivered by a qualified home care worker. With home care service, you could meet everyday goals such as:

  • Household chores
  • Personal care
  • Companionship
  • Medication management
  • Dietary needs
  • Doctor visits
  • Common healthcare issues

Home care is one of the most critical facets of healthcare today because a patient refusing to move into a hospital facility can hire the services of a home care worker. Once you hire a home care worker, you’re in for some amazing benefits like:

  1. Personalized Care

When you are provided care in your own home by a professional, you have more personalized care and service. Because the home care worker gives you full attention, you are more satisfied with the service; whereas, in a healthcare facility, a care worker generally treats one to several patients at a time, reducing the personal treatment time each patient receives. Home care moreover allows you to build a strong connection with the caregiver so that they can understand your needs better. Personalized care not only encourages trust but friendship, as well.

  1. Independence

Perhaps the No.1 advantage of home care is that you or your loved one regains a certain level of independence. Home care services allow you to eat, drink, bathe, and sleep whenever you like and even provide additional support for the outside errands.

  1. Flexibility

When you choose home care over a care home, you receive more flexibility to decide when, how much, or how little care you need. You can also decide how often you want to receive this kind of care. This option is simply not available in care homes.

  1. Relaxes Family Members

If you have an aged member of the family in your home, you and other family members will definitely try to be there for them 24/7. However, neither the patient nor the family members want/s to lose their peace of mind this way. In most cases, home care services help the family  and free up some of their time. This care also helps when a family faces an emergency and requires urgent care for their aged members.

  1. Tailored Care

As mentioned earlier, home care varies with the individual’s needs. At the end of the day, you seek specialized care for serious medical conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and dementia. During home care, you are provided with extensive assistance with physical therapy or a stable recovery if you have undergone any form of medical procedure. You receive the service tailored to your exact needs.

  1. Financial Benefits

If you’re wondering on how you can afford to hire a home care service, note that it will save you and your family money by asking you to pay for only what you need. That being said, it’s important to choose the right domiciliary care or lead care provider.  Hire a reputable one. No matter what, you’ll be much better off receiving home care.

What Emotional Challenges do Caregivers Face?

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For the people who provide personal care for the elderly, it gives them a huge opportunity to stay near and connect with them. However, with opportunities comes challenges, and while most consider personal home care as their responsibility, the obligation might become challenging to fulfill sometimes. The stress and pressures of caregiving can affect everyone in different ways and the causes may include anything that makes a person adapt to changes. While our elderly need care from our sides, there are alternatives care options like hiring home care services in Birmingham, makes it easier for people to stay involved even if they can’t be there for their loved ones personally.

 

Understanding Home Care Challenges

Understanding the challenges that follow a care-giving process helps a person make more planned decisions regarding the care for their elderly. Personal home care is a very stressful activity in itself, and there are ways to reduce the stress and anxiety that comes with it. Experts suggest that a person may feel stressed or depressed during care-giving, but suppressing those symptoms can worsen the situation. As the person feels that the responsibilities of personal care for the elderly are becoming overwhelming, it is time to take necessary actions. Working with a professional home care services in Birmingham will help reduce that stress, preventing any emotional burnout.

 

Challenges Present in Care giving

While providing personal home care for a family member proves to be a rewarding experience, it may sometimes lead to challenges that make a person anxious, feel burnout, or becoming intimidated by the duty. Some of the most common challenges for caregivers are:

 

  • Stress

The most common challenge faced by people during personal care for the elderly is the stress in both physical and mental aspects. Most of the time, their health is also compromised due to care-giving stress and pressures. Providing care for conditions like dementia or Alzheimer’s has been reported as the most common cause of stress. Other physical demands of care-giving also start to take their toll on a person due to duties that include lifting or mobility.

 

  • Time Management

People providing personal home care for their elderly often feel that they have less time to manage for themselves or their families. They often indulge themselves so much in their duties that they have to sacrifice their commitments or things they love like hobbies-or vacations. A way to manage time is to take help from home care services in Birmingham to effectively allocate time for themselves and their commitments and balance their work schedules during care-giving duties.

 

  • One’s Changes

Let’s face it, personal care for the elderly is not an easy job as you have to take care of them just as you take care of a baby, especially for the elderly with dementia or mobility issues. A person has to spend sleepless nights while making sure that the medications and nutrition stay on track, all of this with along with their own work responsibilities. All these factors start to produce stress and ultimately take its toll, resulting in behavioural changes. A person may suddenly burst out on their family members or anyone else for that matter. Reliable home care services in Birmingham can take some of that burden off your shoulders so you can have the rest and time you need to re-energize yourself.

 

  • Privacy Issues

Most of the personal home caregivers report having a lack of privacy once they start to take care of their loved ones. This fact is somewhat true as it is difficult to set boundaries against constant interactions, especially in places with a smaller area.

 

  • Financial Issues

Most of the people providing personal care for the elderly often are unpaid or had to take time off from their paying jobs. This starts to produce financial strain on those people, and the longer they keep fulfilling the duty, the more financially unstable they become. Hiring the services of home care services in Birmingham enables them to attend their jobs while the experts take care of the elders for them.

 

  • Sleeplessness

One of the most common challenges that occur for a personal home caregiver is the lack of sleep due to the sleep-wake cycle of the loved one. Such lack of sleep puts more strain on a person who is already under constant toll from all sides. Lack of sleep also puts a strain on their health and makes their condition worse.

 

Final Word

Taking care of a loved one is a rewarding experience and a chance to connect with the elderly. However, these points mentioned above makes the responsibility all the more difficult for anyone providing personal care for the elderly. Sometimes they may be too shy to ask for help, but in any case, professional services may help them in sharing their burden as well as providing them with time to balance their work and personal life too.

What Do You Need to Know About Palliative Care

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If you or anyone else around you has been diagnosed with a life-threatening or long-lasting illness, getting help from palliative care services can make you and the lives of those around you much easier.

But what exactly is palliative care?

Palliative care is special care given to someone with a severe illness, and the care is focused on providing relief from the stress and the signs of the illness. The ultimate goal of a palliative care service is to improve the quality of life for both the patient and the family.

How is care administered?

The administration of palliative care is carried out by a team of highly skilled professional doctors, nurses, or any other specialist. These professionals work in coordination with other professionals to provide an extra layer of support. Palliative care servicesare based on the needs of the patient and not on the development of illness, whether it will improve or worsen with time.

The palliative care service providers work in the alignment of the patient to identify the goals, which are providing relief from symptoms, spiritual comfort, counseling, or any other thing that can improve the quality of life. Besides having a serious illness, such care services may also be administered for people having frequent hospitalizations or emergency visits.

Who can benefit from it?

Palliative care services are available for anyone with a serious illness regardless of age, diagnosis, treatment choice, or prognosis. It is ideally provided to people since the beginning and during their illness. Patients can have both their treatment and palliative care simultaneously. Having palliative care not only improves the quality of life by removing stress associated with the disease but also helps a patient live longer. The survival period depends on the appropriate administration of disease-related treatments and early referrals for symptom identification and stabilization.

Palliative Care Helps You Stay at Home

The main advantage of a palliative care service is that you get all the care and administration from the comfort of your home. There is no need to have frequent trips to emergency rooms or have unwanted hospital stays while having care administered to you. Having added support at home makes a huge difference in the improvement process like an expert pain control system will keep a patient and their family member much comfortable. The palliative care experts that consist of doctors, nurses, or caregivers, spend as much time as needed to understand the situation and how help can be given.

Which Disease Can be treated with Palliative Care?

Initially, palliative care services were developed for terminally ill patients, but over time, it has evolved into a more specialized medical facility that focuses on broader aspects of serious or life-threatening diseases.

Today, patients with diseases like cancer, HIV, lung disease, heart issues, Alzheimer’s, and many other serious illnesses become eligible for palliative care. The primary aim here is to manage the symptoms as the diseases can cause symptoms, as well as their treatments,which can also give rise to certain symptoms like nausea or vomiting. Having palliative care services enable you to provide relief for various symptoms so you can carry on with your life with the ability to complete the treatments.

What does Palliative Care provide?

Palliative care helps your primary physician to ensure the kind of response, and patient-centered care is given when and where needed or to the person at their most vulnerable. Having palliative care services also improve communication between the patient and the care team. Palliative care provides several responses for symptom relief that includes:

  • Expert treatment of your symptoms while under a closely monitored activity.
  • Discussion about the allocation of time to meet the patient or their treatment choices along with other curative options.
  • Coordination among all the health care professionals, whether internal or external.
  • Emotional and spiritual support.

Focusing on the improvement of communication, in addition to symptom management, enables the palliative team to explore different goals and aims of the patient. Today, patients with chronic illness can survive for days and can be cured, but having palliative care services is necessary for those who want to remain in control of their lives while under the influence of the disease.

Final Word

A patient can start palliative care anytime during the course of their disease or as soon as they receive a diagnosis report. They do not need to wait for the disease to reach a certain stage before considering palliative care services. The fact is, the earlier a patient undergoes palliative care, the better chances they have of curing the stress, anxiety, and depression associated with the disease. Palliative care teams truly understand the problems and stresses that remain associated with chronic illness, and they try their best to give an acute response to their patients.

Mistakes to Avoid While Hiring Domiciliary Cares Services

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When hiring a caregiver to provide home domiciliary care services to your elders, you need to make sure they get along and does a great job with them. Choosing the best domiciliary care in Birmingham is a big decision to make, so it seems perfect to explore all the options ahead.

There is a lot of information present that states what questions you should ask while looking for a home care agency. At the same time, you also need to avoid some mistakes while conducting your research. We have compiled some potential mistakes people usually make. Read through and learn about how to evaluate and choose the best care agency for your loved ones.

 

  • Taking Too Long

One of the biggest mistake people make while hiring domiciliary care services is to put it off, which means they wait too long to hire professional help for their elders. Hiring an agency for domiciliary care services gives a mental comfort to your elders and to you as well. The psychological well-being depends upon the early hiring done for the parents.

 

  • Not Getting Enough Information

While searching for an agency for professional care service, one needs to make sure the information provided is legit and complete. You need to make sure that the information regarding fee, eligibility and services suits your needs. Usually, they tend to give false or too little information that produces problems for the ones looking for urgent help. Make sure you take all the necessary information regarding the agency and make your decision accordingly.

 

  • Only Looking at the Cost

One of the most selfish mistakes one can make is to think only about the cost while searching for domiciliary care in Birmingham. Sure, you need to take budget in focus, but that does not mean you jeopardise the quality of care in comparison to cost. Price is definitely a consideration, but without value,it is nothing. The right agency will sit down and devise a proper care plan for your elders that not only meets your needs but also your budget.

 

  • Multiple Caregivers

Employers like the stability of a single caregiver and a single contact point for service. Having a single point of contact means they take the responsibility seriously and surety to the client that nothing will be lost in communication. Those home domiciliary care services that assign multiple caregivers on rotating basis tend to lose the communication and the spirit of service.

 

  • Not Having a Care Plan

Design a care plan according to the needs and specifications you have along with the checklist that details the agencies work routine. The best domiciliary care services tend to give the client a daily care plan through which they carry their services. You need to make a care plan ahead of hiring a service so you can easily explain what specification you have and how to perform them.

 

  • Putting Your Wishes Ahead of Your Loved Ones

Family members often search for care providers with whom they feel comfortable rather than care for the one who is in need of the service. Whether an elder is ill or disabled, they need to feel comfortable and secure. Make the decision of hiring a home domiciliary care service based on how an elder feels around the care provider.

 

  • Not Conducting Background Checks

While hiring a care provider, a mistake people make is to trust blindly on the agency and not making a background check. You need to make sure the person entering your home and taking care of your elder has a clean sheet. Make sure the background is clear, and no criminal record of any sort is present. Screen a potential candidate to make sure you didn’t  let in a suspicious person in any way.

 

  • Selecting a Wrong Agency

While making a decision regarding the type of agency to provide domiciliary care services, keep in mind that a medical-related service agency might provide non-medical services also. However, a non-medical agency does not have the skills to handle medical-related issues if needed. This mistake often made due to prices quoted or skills not properly understood. Make sure to take the necessary information from the concerned contact person of the agency you have chosen to avoid any mishap.

 

  • Not Staying in Contact with the Agency

It is important to ask your elders regarding the care they are having and their satisfaction level with the caregiver in case their needs fail to meet. On the hand, do make regular checks with the care aide and the home domiciliary care service provider you have chosen to keep yourself updated. Stay in contact with the agency at all times to avoid any discrepancy in the service to your loved ones.

Benefits of Having Live-in Care in Birmingham

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Families turn to care service agencies once they realise their elders have reached a point where they need round the clock attention. However, due to certain emotional or physical distress, this decision becomes daunting for the person in need of care and their families. Now families have a service of live-in care in Birmingham that they can take advantage of and provide care for their elders that they deserve.

Live-in care, just as the name sounds, is a service where the caregiver lives in your home. The availability of these service providers remains at all times (mornings & evenings) with the exception of breaks.

Most live-in care workers live full-time with the ones they provide services to, for a period of time and then sharing the workload with another care professional after that period. Plenty of reasons show live-in care service as the best care for your loved ones. Here we list a few of them through which you can make an effective decision.

 

  • Care at Home

A person’s home serves as the most comfort zone and a sanctuary. A place that has sentimental value, memories and personal treasures, make it hard to give up. However, putting aside the sentiments and attachments, the familiarity of home is important for many reasons. Remaining in a surrounding that is familiar puts an impact on the person receiving care. They feel comfortable in having someone taking care of them at home. Most noticeably, if a person has dementia or suffers from Alzheimer, home comfort becomes even more necessary. Live-in care in Birmingham provides them with comfortable navigation at home where they remain safe while prone to becoming confused.

  • Dedicated Care

A care home, although equipped with all the necessary accessories, might not give an effective round the clock service live-in care in Birmingham might give. Live-in care professionals provide a dedicated service to your loved ones at all times. Care homes also have the care services, but their focus is on well-being of multiple elders. Live-in individuals dedicate themselves completely for the ones they are living with to provide them with special care needed. With live-in care, you can rest assured that the professional has taken charge of the care and 100% committed towards your service.

  • Face Value

The face of a live-in care in Birmingham professional becomes familiar to the ones they give their service. Especially the elders feel comfortable with the ones they become familiar with, and that respects them. The level of commitment and comfort your loved ones get far exceeds the value they get in a care home. Comfort is the key to any excellent care service, and they receive it through the ones they become familiar with.

  • Stability

Getting comfortable with a care professional becomes difficult if there is a revolving cast of care aides like in a care home. For that reason, live-in care in Birmingham provides stability in care services that becomes invaluable. Not only will you and your loved ones receive a proper care plan, but the same people also do the execution. This produces a lasting effect on the comfort level of both the families and the ones receiving care. A reliable and greater bond created makes them feel safe and secure with each other, resulting in an unmatched care service.

  • Peace of Mind

Having someone stay full time to handle the emergency issues has its own safety benefits. It also produces peace of mind effect that eases both the families and people receiving care. This means everyone gets a good night sleep and well-deserved rest.

  • Better Lifestyle

A person receiving care at home has an easy time maintaining their routine lifestyle. This means that they carry on their daily routine and social aspects while remaining under the watchful eye of a live-in care in Birmingham professional. They can also keep their pets with them and attend their usual social activities. Residential care services isolate them from the community, which leads them to think that they might have lost their freedom.

  • Family Input

Having one or two caregivers working on a care plan helps the family members to stay in touch and updated. It makes it easier to feel included in a care plan. Families feel involved if they know the care plan and are familiar with live-in care professionals.

Conclusion

Securing the professional services of live-in care in Birmingham makes all the difference for the elders to receive the best quality care. Our elders deserve all the care and concern we have and securing the services of such an individual makes the feel safe and comfortable. These care professionals live with you and give your elders the best care through dedication and commitment, giving them a feeling of safety and comfort in their senior times.