When to start considering a caregiver?
When a loved one needs assistance with personal care or there are concerns about them staying safe alone at home, it may be time to start looking into homecare options. Changes may be subtle or obvious such as:
- Decline in personal hygiene, or household cleanliness
- Forgetfulness about where belongings are, paying bills, a pot on the stove, taking medications, etc.
- New health conditions making self- care more difficult, or changes in mobility
What does caregiving include?
The needs of your loved one may fit in just one of these areas, or they may need assistance in multiple ways across these areas.
Personal care: Bathing, eating, dressing, toileting, personal grooming
Household care: Cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, yard work
Health care: Managing and reminding about medications, doctor’s appointments, physical therapy, exercise
Emotional care: Companionship, meaningful activities, conversation, socialisation, recreational activities
The types of care that your loved one needs can change and develop over time, and they may begin to need help in areas where they didn’t before.
What are the different types of caregivers?
Caregivers may be unpaid such as family and friends helping out, or when more assistance is needed some families may choose to hire paid caregivers.
The Ageing and Disability (ADS) home care providers Registry has 3 types of caregivers:
- Personal caregiver or family caregiver
- Skilled Caregiver
- Nurse, registered (RN) or enrolled (EN)
What’s the purpose of the ADS home care provider registry?
The purpose is to create a vetting process of home care providers for the government payers to reimburse care providers of good standing, and thereby protect vulnerable persons of the public who may need home care services.
Who are the government payers?
The government payers Health Insurance Department, HIP and FutureCare plans,
Dept. of Financial Assistance, and Dept. of Social Insurance for War Veterans provide home care benefits on behalf of their clients.
What’s the difference in the types of caregivers?
Personal caregivers are persons interested in assisting others but may not have any formal training. Dementia training is recommended for those caring for persons or family with dementia.
Personal Caregivers may provide:
- Companionship by engaging in conversation, and recreational activities
- Prompting, cueing or minimal hands-on assistance with bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting, eating, and walking for non-frail and non-medically complex persons
- Changing bed linens, putting out trash, light housekeeping
- Meal preparation and clean up
- Transportation
Skilled Caregivers are nursing associates, or geriatric aides registered with the Bermuda Nursing Council which requires completion of an approved educational training program.
Skilled Caregivers may perform personal caregiving tasks as well as:
- Hands on care for frail or bedridden for bathing, dressing, toileting, and mobility assistance such as transfers from chair to bed
- Monitor for changes in health conditions
- May provide dressing changes to simple wounds but not complex
Nurses, RN or EN, are professionally trained nurses registered with the Bermuda Nursing Council who may provide:
- Care needs assessments ,care planning
- Monitoring of health conditions
- Preparation and administration of medications
- Medical or nursing treatments
- Supervision of other caregivers
Only nurses (RN or EN) registered with the Bermuda Nursing Council can prepare or administer medications. Skilled caregivers or Nursing Associates may assist the care recipient in following a medication schedule when medication are ready to take in clearly labelled pre-measured doses such as blister packs, or weekly pill organizers.