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Making sure your elderly family member or loved one gets the home care he or she needs can be an incredibly difficult, emotionally taxing process. In an ideal world, you could be there for your family member 24/7, but, in a practical sense, this is impossible. The thought of placing grandma or grandpa in a nursing home is stressful, so why not consider home care from Visiting Angels Toms River? This allows increased comfort as it lets your loved one remain independent. Besides offering meal prep and dealing with other practicalities, home caregivers provide much needed companionship.

But what should you look for in a senior caregiver?

  • Ability to Sit Still: Perhaps the most underappreciated skill of the senior caregiver is that of just being there. A caregiver needs to be responsive to his or her patient, and sometimes that means not feeling pressured to “fix” something but instead just to be a calming, nurturing presence.
  • Time Management Skills & Flexibility: The caregiver needs to be able to adjust his or her schedule, ensuring that the patient is never left alone. An unsupervised senior might neglect to take the proper medication. Make sure the senior caregiver is willing and able to stay longer if need be and always arrives promptly.
  • Attention: Since someone receiving home health care services is not being medically evaluated every day, the caregiver should be able to notice any changes in skin color, energy level, or diet. These can all be signs of a problem, and early detection always leads to better prognosis.
  • Good Interpersonal Skills: Caregiving for the elderly requires patience, an ability to deal with feeling uncomfortable and a kind of removal of the ego. Sometimes the behavior of a senior citizen will be disruptive or unpleasant to the caregiver, but this needs to be let go.
  • An Even Keel: The caregiver needs to be able to push his or her own interpersonal conflicts, stresses, and worries aside. The elderly person should not be taking on any extra emotional burdens incurred by contact with the caregiver.

Visiting Angels Toms River in New Jersey is part of a network of home care service providers, and it just might be exactly what you need in terms of geriatric home care. For more about their caregivers, or about elderly care in general visit the company’s website, or call (732) 240-1050.  

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