Affordable Home Care Options For Seniors USA
One discouraging thing about nursing homes is that they tend to be pricey. This is reasonable because these places only want to offer the best for the elderly people. They don’t want them to feel deprived. They want them to just enjoy life. But to some, this can be a financial burden, especially to those who have just spent a lot of money on their parents’ or grandparents’ medical treatment. There are affordable home care options in the USA that you can avail of. These options will give their full effort to take care of elderly people but at a price that won’t hurt your wallet. A relatively inexpensive service fee doesn’t mean low-quality service. These facilities can give only the best to their clients. Here are some of the affordable home care options for seniors USA that you might want to consider visiting.
1. Hire a caregiver privately
You can save money if you hire a caregiver privately than hire them through a home care agency. You can save up to 30% of the typical fee of a caregiver coming from an agency. This makes sense because the agency does everything before hiring qualified caregivers. They do background checks, they process insurance, they even train them, and they also process the salary to make it easy for you to process all paper documents. If you hire a private caregiver you’ll be the one to do all these things. Just make sure to do a background check on the caregiver. This is quite challenging. You have to know everything about the caregiver so you’ll be assured that they are a legit caregiver and not someone faking an identity.
2. Informal Caregivers
If you only need simple assistance like someone to help the elderly to do dishes, do grocery shopping, and make sure that they eat on time and take their medicine as prescribed, then you can opt to hire informal caregivers. These people can be your friend, a relative, your neighbor, or whoever is willing to take care of them. You only hire a caregiver if they need professional care. If not and they can still perform daily activities with no to little difficulties, then it is more practical to hire an informal caregiver. They will be the ones to clean the house, cook food, do the grocery shopping, wash the dishes, do the laundry, take care of pets, and maintain the green lawn. Make sure to hire someone capable of multitasking and someone with a lot of patience. This way you get the worth of their salary. This is like babysitting but for elderly people.
3. Adult Foster Care
You know foster care, right? This is a temporary care service for those who cannot live in their house or on their own. The foster parent or foster home will take care of them temporarily while you are away or busy doing your stuff. This adult foster care involves a home-like facility that accommodates only a few residents. It has staff members that are paid. This is an affordable home care option because it’s less expensive but still capable of taking elderly people and giving them only the best treatment. The staff members can help the elderly with different daily tasks including meal preparation, transportation, and medication. You can find adult foster care that only requires a service fee of $1,500. Just make sure to do a background check on the facility first before you send them here. Do interviews of the owner, the members, and even the past members about their experiences like what they love and what they hate about the place. It would be great to list down all foster care options that you have and see which one is the best for them and the best given your budget.
4. Adult Day Care
The most difficult part about elderly care is that you have to go to work and no one will be left behind to take care of them. Of course, you have to continue doing your work so you can still support them financially, especially now that they are on maintenance and they require a lot of things to make their lives comfortable and convenient. Continuing your work doesn’t mean you have a lot of money to send them into a luxurious nursing home. If you have the time at night to take care of them, then you only need a place that can entertain them during the day. Adult Daycare is similar to a child daycare center. You leave them here while you are at work and then pick them up after your work. There are over 4,000 adult daycare centers in the US. For sure, you can find one that is the best for them and your tight budget. These facilities cannot only take care of them but can also give therapy and health monitoring services.
5. Community Groups
If you happen to be in a good neighborhood, chances are, there are communities there that are meant to help the elderly in your village. You can join them by paying for the membership. These communities have members or volunteers that will help the elderly in their daily activities. This includes taking home errands and providing companionship to elderly people. There are also faith-based communities that have members meant to assist elderly people in the religious community. They accompany them to medical appointments and help them with transportation. These people are not strangers to you. If they are in your community, then you already know their personality and you already know that they can be trusted. You are assured that they are in good hands. You can work peacefully knowing that they are being well taken care of. The membership fee to some communities only ranges from $200 to $600. They can also invite them to other social groups like a book club or a yoga class.
We all want the best home care option for our parents and grandparents. This doesn’t mean we get the most luxurious nursing home. Even they would not like to like in one. A huge space is where you’ll feel the loneliest. Only choose one that can provide assistance and companionship. There are tons of affordable home care options in the US that you can avail of. Those five options that we have just mentioned are just some of them. There are also affordable nursing homes, you just have to look hard to find them. Hope you find the best home care option for you and your budget!