The Growing Need For Senior Home Care in Canada

An aging population has made home care a growing need for seniors in Canada. Over 1.4 million Canadians are currently receiving this kind of care, and this number is expected to grow. As more elderly people require care at home throughout the day, the availability of home caregivers has decreased. As a result, more job opportunities in the field have arisen.

What Is Home Care?

Home senior care means that a caregiver will come to home of an elderly person in order to assist them with daily tasks that they are not able to complete on their own. Tasks that are completed by home caregivers include:

– Assisting with bathing and other personal hygiene tasks

– Administering medication as prescribed by a doctor

– Providing physical therapy treatments for those who need it

– Cooking nutritious meals that adhere to dietary restrictions

– Light housekeeping tasks to maintain the cleanliness of a home

– Driving elderly patients to appointments

– Helping patients with limited mobility get around a home

 

Benefits of Home Care

Allowing an elderly patient to remain in the comfort of their own home is the primary benefit of hiring a home caregiver. Declining health may make it necessary for a person to move to a healthcare facility in the future, but delaying the decision to take a patient out of familiar surroundings means a less stressful situation for the patient.

 

Other benefits of hiring a home caregiver include:

– Reducing stress for family members of the elderly patient. Family members who would like to keep their loved ones at home may take it upon themselves to stay with their love one as a caregiver. This puts a lot of stress on family members, and they may not be properly trained to provide the care that is needed.

– Making the healing process quicker and easier on the body. The familiar surroundings and comfort associated with home have been proven to speed recovery for elderly patients.

– The convenience of having a caregiver come to a patient’s home. Instead of making a person leave their home in order to access health care services and receive the benefits of having a caregiver, home senior care brings these services directly to the home of a patient.

A Growing Need for Senior Care in Canada

Caregivers are more scarce as a higher number of Canadians require care services in their own home. The Canadian government has worked to address this need by striving to standardise home health care services for consistency, finding ways to determine whether caregivers are providing effective services and providing family caregivers with support for their personal physical and emotional health needs.

As home caregivers allow elderly patients to receive care at a reduced cost as compared to services that include room and board costs, allowing more people to receive this kind of care will reduce health care costs across the nation. Availability of home senior care is expected to increase as more healthcare professionals choose to work in this growing field.

(Photo License: Royalty Free or iStock source: depositphoto.com)

Rita Macpherson is a health blogger and suggests that Canadians looking to acquire homecare for a senior citizen visit www.bayshore.ca