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We all experience a large mental obstacle when it comes to placing a loved one in a long-term care facility. We all naturally feel guilty about this topic, and this is expected. Taking care of someone dear to you never feels like a burden, either until you are burnt out or if you pass the baton of being a caregiver onto someone else. Unfortunately, this results in people keeping the patient/their loved one at home for far too long, and they suffer as a result. In this section, I will outline the details which you should, at the very least, start considering looking for a long-term care centre.
Items of consideration:
- Are 24/7 services needed?
- Are services during the hours of 20:00-07:00 needed?
- Is the patient immobile?
- Can the patient offer any assistance when needing to be moved under their own power?
- Is the patient obese?
- Is the patient incontinent?
If your loved one requires 24/7 or overnight care, your monthly bill will either come close to what you will pay for a semi-private room in a long-term care facility, or it will easily dwarf and overtake it.
For reference, such a semi-private room at an LTC starts at around $2500 a month at the time of writing, and PSWs hired from legitimate agencies that do house visits cost around $35-40 an hour. Some of the people I have spoken to have given into the temptation of hiring non-agency workers to save some money, and there are many risks associated with this. First, they are not vetted and usually refuse to provide a police background check, which you are fully justified and entitled to ask for. If a PSW refuses to provide a police background check, consider this as a red flag. Second, they may not have the proper training and are lying. Third, you are placing your household at risk by letting in strangers who are at a higher risk of being in vulnerable positions in their lives, and on more than one occasion to those whom I have spoken; this vulnerability became a security threat to those hiring such workers in the past. Agencies that employ PSWs do the vetting process for you, and besides the initial interview, they are well worth the extra for the peace of mind that they offer.
If the patient is immobile, incontinent or obese, then you really need to take an honest stock of your own abilities. Regardless of the patient’s size or weight, caring for someone with any or all of the above conditions will result in overuse and repetitive strain injuries for the amateur caregiver, thus requiring treatment. Not only will the quality of your life outside of being a caregiver be impacted, but your ability to care for your loved one will be compromised. This will lead to greater risks of both of you getting injured. Finally, you will also need to factor in proper physiotherapy for yourself to treat any injuries which would arise from caring for your loved one. Be warned that a mild and treatable condition can easily cost more than a thousand dollars to treat over the course of many months. We will visit the care you need to address when it comes to yourself as a caregiver later in the article.
If your loved one can be comfortably taken care of with the assistance of government-funded services at home, then your care coordinator will ensure that you are well-equipped moving forward. If it is determined that your loved one requires help that only a long-term care facility can provide, then there are many steps and matters that you need to be aware of.