Home Care Concerns: How to Trust Someone to Care for Your Loved Ones

Home Care Concerns: How to Trust Someone to Care for Your Loved Ones
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Getting the perfect person to take care of your aging loved ones can be a pretty daunting task. The dynamics of trust, independence, self-reliance, and other factors often come to play. It is normal to raise some questions or doubts regarding whether or not you can trust the new caregiver. Will they take care of your loved ones as you would want? Will your seniors be safe? These questions all come from the point of trust or the lack of it. However, like other virtues, you can learn how to trust a person tasked with taking care of your loved ones by:

1.  Involve the Caregiver in Daily Tasks

When you first get a caregiver, it is vital to get involved in whatever they do. For example, if your loved one needs to be taken to the hospital, it is good to accompany the caregiver for the first few visits. Doing this gives you the confidence that the caregiver will follow the correct procedures when carrying out the care-related tasks. If you leave all responsibilities to the person when they arrive, you will quite possibly spend time wondering whether you can trust their decisions and judgment.

2.  Spend Time Together

Spending time with the new caregiver is undoubtedly among the best ways to learn how to trust them. You will learn more about the person, their perspectives, decisions, and life story through quality time. Such information can easily help you figure out whether or not you can trust the person. Additionally, it’s through such moments that the caregiver will familiarize themselves with your preferences as well as those of your loved ones when it comes to caregiving.

3.  Connect to Reality

The truth of the matter is that you cannot rush trust. Most times, you might find things getting more manageable when you slow down. Your new caregiver might be coming from a different background and might require some time to get accustomed to your space. Before this happens, you might wrongly assume that they are untrustworthy since the person does not conform to your beliefs or practices. Trying to connect with the caregiver’s reality can help you trust them by giving them the necessary time to adapt.

4.  Choose Slow Transition

When choosing the best home care for seniors, you will consider having the potential caregiver meet your loved ones. During this meetup, you should keep the visit relatively short and be present throughout the entire interaction. Additionally, you might want to consider having your caregiver come in for a few hours a day and then transition gradually to more hours as the familiarity grows. Doing this ensures that the transition in caregiving is smooth, making it easier for you to trust the new person.

Besides the transition, you will want to save all the sensitive issues for more advanced stages of the caregiver-client relationship. Start with light tasks related to companionship and social activities and later transition to more personal tasks such as dressing, hygiene, laundry, and food preparation.

5.  Do Not Micromanage

Nobody likes to be nitpicked or criticized about everything. While it is important to communicate your expectations and preferences to the caregiver, there is a line between doing so and overseeing every little thing the person does. If you have micromanagement tendencies, you might find it hard to trust whatever the caregiver does.

6.  Ask Questions

At times, mistrust stems from a lack of information or unclarity. If you have doubts regarding the caregiver’s decision, knowledge, or competence, feel free to ask them and allow them to clarify. Doing this will help you build a good relationship based on openness. For example, you could ask your caregiver why they prefer preparing a particular meal in a certain way. If their explanation is acceptable, you will have an easier time trusting them with food preparation.

7.  Remind Yourself That Trust Takes Time to Build

If you have lingering doubts and trust issues regarding your new caregiver, rest assured that your response is entirely normal. Trusting a person takes consistency and daily commitment. Don’t be in a rush and do not have many expectations. The truth is, it will take some time to trust a total stranger with your loved ones.

While trusting a new person to take care of your loved ones is not easy, it should certainly not be overly complex. By following the above trust-building tips, you can easily create a good relationship with your new caregiver.

About the Author

Jennifer Bell is a freelance writer, blogger, dog-enthusiast, and avid beachgoer operating out of Southern New Jersey.


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I am a pop culture and social media expert. Aside from writing about the latest news health, I also enjoy pop culture and Yoga. I have BA in American Cultural Studies and currently enrolled in a Mass-Media MA program. I like to spend my spring breaks volunteering overseas.

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