How to Prepare Your Parent’s Home for a Live-in Care Provider

Preparing your parent’s home for the beginning of a home care journey with a live-in care provider is not the same as preparing the home for any other type of care provider. This is because the care provider will be spending a considerable amount more time in the home than other types of care providers, and will be handling more of her own personal care task and activities of daily living in your parent’s home. This means that it is essential you take the time to properly ready your loved one’s home so that the care provider is comfortable from the beginning and your parent can get the maximum benefit out of the relationship from the start.

Use these tips to help you prepare your parent’s home for the beginning of a home care journey with a live-in care provider:

• Establish boundaries. Are there areas of the home that you or your parent do not want the care provider going into? Does your parent have entertainment features of the home that the care provider might want to use? Does your parent have house rules that might apply to a care provider coming in for this type of care, such as not smoking or not having guests come to the house? Establish these boundaries ahead of time and make any modifications to the home that are necessary to reaffirm these boundaries. This might include adding locks to doors to off-limits rooms, or covering a pool that your parent does not want used.
• Establish sleeping quarters. This care provider will need her own space to sleep on the nights when she is in the home with your parent. This room should be private and used only for her sleeping. This means that you cannot expect her to sleep on a sofa or fold-out couch, or to share her sleeping area with a home office. This room should lock and have all of the amenities that she will need to be comfortable in the home, including multiple sets of bedding to ensure they are clean at all times.
• Establish other personal areas. The care provider will also need other areas of the home set aside for her for her use. This may be a shelf or section of the refrigerator in the kitchen where she can keep her personal food, or a place in the cabinet where she can keep her toiletries and other personal items. Ensure that your parent understands these are not for her use and that she is not to touch them.
• Establish personal time schedule. Even though the schedule is not exactly what a conventional job requires, this is still the care provider’s job, which means she has life outside of it. She should not be expected to be “on duty” from the moment that she wakes up in the morning until she goes to bed at night. Instead, there should be built in time in the morning and evening when she can shower, relax, and spend some time to herself unless there is an emergency.

If you or an aging loved one are considering home care in Lafayette Hill, PA, contact the caring professionals at Reliant At Home Care today (610) 674-6860.