How to Safely Hire Home Care Services During COVID-19

There really is no place like home. It’s where you or a loved one have spent the majority of your adult life, raising children, making memories and living life to the fullest. As you age, though, you may no longer be able to care for yourself like you used to in your home. Instead of leaving it, though, you can turn to home care services.

At Fellowship Senior Living, we offer home care services you can trust and rely on especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Get an inside look at our home care services from Elizabeth Fandel, Senior Vice President of Home & Community Based Services at Fellowship Senior Living.

What to Look for in Home Care Services During the Pandemic

When you are looking to hire homecare for yourself or a loved one during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are certain factors you should keep in mind. The most important component to consider is the home caregiver’s knowledge, expertise and preparation.

“One thing that’s very important during this time is considering the training that the caregivers have, said Elizabeth. If the caregivers aren’t working for a licensed and accredited home care agency and trained by a nurse on proper infection control, they may not know how to provide care properly during the time of COVID-19.

Elizabeth also spoke to the importance of home caregivers fully understanding that COVID-19 is an infection control situation that needs to be handled with care.

Caregivers are definitely working in an infection control situation during the pandemic, said Elizabeth. That’s why our caregivers are trained on infection control, making sure that they are taking all of the proper precautions when caring for someone.

Another piece of advice Elizabeth offered when you’re looking to hire a caregiver is to consider how many caregivers will be coming in and out of your home and decide how much exposure you are comfortable with.

“Speak to your home care provider and consider a live-in caregiver or one to two home caregivers that are full timers that come and stay, as opposed to coming and leaving, said Elizabeth. You need to be mindful of how many caregivers come into your home to limit your risk of exposure to the virus.

With all of this advice in mind, be aware that receiving home care during the COVID-19 pandemic is still very much possible and can be done in a safe way, as long as the correct safety measures are taken.

Fellowship Home Care Services and COVID-19 Precautions

At Fellowship Senior Living, one of the many senior living services we offer you is the option of home care. We are taking many precautions to keep our clients, patients, residents and team members as safe as possible, which in turn allows us to keep everyone protected and healthy.

Some of our protocols include providing all of our team members with personal protective equipment (PPE) and giving them the opportunity to ask for additional PPE at any time, if needed.

“With COVID-19, our caregivers have unlimited access to PPE. All they have to do is come in and see the nurse and request more gloves, masks or face shields and they will receive it. We want them to feel as comfortable as possible,” Elizabeth said.

Our top priority is the safety of all those we serve and that’s why we’re going above and beyond to ensure we are caring for our communities in a responsible, safe manner.

Whether they’re living in their home or another assisted living community, we’re very hyper-cautious that we’re making sure our caregivers are following the CDC guidelines for washing hands and wearing the recommended PPE, said Elizabeth.

We are also testing our team members regularly for COVID-19 to ensure that the virus is not able to spread within our communities.

“We test our caregivers regularly that work off campus in people’s private homes, so we can do our best to ensure that when clients are receiving care in their home, we’ve gone above and beyond to make that client and their family feel safe as best we can,” said Elizabeth.

You can view our full list of COVID-19 protocols here. By taking these added precautions and safety measures, we are doing our best to ensure our clients are still able to safely receive home care during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Fellowship’s Highly Trained Home Care Team

Our dedicated, highly trained caregivers receive ongoing training on a regular basis to ensure they are very familiar with the proper safety precautions and procedures.

“We’re constantly training, re-training and communicating with our caregivers. It’s critical to do so, said Elizabeth. We still have regular virtual in-service meetings with our caregivers through Zoom so that we can continue our education with them.”

Most of our caregivers serve as full time employees, which helps drive consistency among our clients and reduces the number of caregivers you have coming in and out of your home. When you have a smaller number of caregivers in your home, or even just one live-in caregiver, you have less of a chance of being exposed to COVID-19.

“Our caregivers become like family members to our clients, said Elizabeth. We put a lot of time and effort into recruiting the proper caregivers, bringing them in, training them and making sure that they’re a good fit for the organization and for the type and quality of services that we want to deliver.

Experience Personalized Home Care at Fellowship Senior Living

Fellowship Senior Living has been around for 25 years and we are considered an expert in senior care. Our Fellowship Helping Hands home care service is available 24/7 to Fellowship Village residents in the Basking Ridge, NJ area and to seniors who live throughout the state.

Our home care services provide you with assistance with daily activities like bathing, dressing, light housekeeping, medication management, transportation and more. Contact us today at 908-580-3840 to learn more about our home care services.