As an adult child taking care of elderly parents, working through a risk assessment for elderly care with a professional care coach is a must. An aged care risk assessment tool ensures you provide the best care possible to your loved one.
Do you want to keep caring for your loved one yourself?
Do you know which areas of care you should focus on?
Have you thought about working with an elder care expert to help you provide better care?
Like many adult children or family caregivers, you may want to provide hands-on care to your aging loved ones. Regularly talking with an elder care coach can give you the confidence, knowledge, and resources you need.
In this article, we will talk about why a care coach relationship is valuable for family caregivers. We’ll also share insight into one of a care coach’s most powerful tools—a home safety assessment for elderly adults.
Keep reading to learn how coaching for elder care can benefit you today.
What is Care Coaching?
Care coaching is a one-on-one relationship between a family caregiver and a trained eldercare professional. Care coaches aren’t just eldercare experts; they’re also master’s-level social workers who understand social, emotional, and mental needs.
A care coach’s goal is to empower caregivers to:
- Improve their loved one’s safety
- Enhance their loved one’s quality of life
- Ease caregiver burdens
With care coaching, family caregivers receive 75 minutes of call time each month with their care coach. During these calls, elder care coaches:
- Talk with family caregivers
- Perform a risk assessment for elderly care
- Answer caregiver questions
- Provide caregiving advice
- Address social, emotional, or mental needs (i.e., stress)
- Help create a care plan for the family caregiver to follow
One of a care coach’s most valuable tools is the second item listed—home safety assessment for elderly adults. It’s what makes care coaching effective, so let’s look at it more in-depth to give you an idea of what it is and why it’s so valuable.
Risk Assessment for Elderly Care
Being a family caregiver can be so stressful that you might not know what’s causing the stress. A few of the many areas family caregivers may need to address include:
How do you know which areas of care are most important to focus on with your loved one? What are the best ways to address these care needs?
It can be challenging to know which care needs are the highest priority, especially when there may be multiple areas that you need to address at one time. And once you know the areas of need, you may not know how to meet those needs. All of this can lead to feeling overwhelmed and stressed.
Understanding caregiver stress, where it’s coming from, and how to move forward is where the risk assessment tool comes into play.
What Is an Eldercare Risk Assessment?
A risk assessment makes being a family caregiver more manageable. Instead of focusing on the whole puzzle simultaneously, the risk assessment tool helps break caregiving down into smaller pieces.
A family caregiver risk assessment tool is a way to:
- Hone in on the highest priority care needs
- Identify the areas that are causing you the most stress
- Create a customized care plan
Once your care coach knows the specific areas of need, they can provide you with the tools, resources, and help necessary to address those needs.
How Does the Aged Care Risk Assessment Tool Work?
The risk assessment tool is something that you’ll do during your first care coaching call and then periodically throughout your coaching relationship. Your elder care coach will use it to assess how well your current care plan is progressing and figure out new areas to address.
Here’s how the process works:
Step #1: Reach out to a care coach to start a coaching relationship
Step #2: The care coach performs an initial 14 question assessment
Step #3: The coach takes your top concern and performs a more thorough assessment
Step #4: Your care coach talks you through the findings and top areas of risk
Step #5: You and your coach create an action plan to mitigate risk
Let’s say you take the initial 14 question assessment, and driving is your top area of concern. Your coach will do a driving-specific check to pinpoint driving concerns more accurately. They’ll ask a series of questions, like:
- Is your parent getting lost on familiar routes?
- Have you noticed new dents or scratches on the vehicle?
- Has he/she been advised to limit/stop driving due to a health reason?
Then, your coach will advise you on what to do and how to do it in the best way possible. You’ll take the advice and the care plan and put them into action. The next time you talk to your coach, they’ll ask how the plan is going and potentially do the driving-specific assessment again to re-evaluate progress. If you need to make any adjustments, your coach will provide suggestions.
Again, the risk assessment tool helps pinpoint specific areas of stress and concern so you can prioritize and work through them.
Connect with an Elder Care Coach Today
Sometimes adult children or other family caregivers want to provide hands-on care to their aging loved ones but aren’t sure how to do it. Additionally, the stress and burden of caregiving can leave family caregivers feeling overwhelmed.
Care coaching provides a way for family caregivers to receive regular access to and help from a home care professional. Each month, family caregivers can talk to a care coach over the phone for up to 75 minutes.
Using a 14 question risk assessment tool for elderly care, care coaches help caregivers pinpoint specific areas of concern and create a care plan to handle these concerns. Their main goal is to empower family caregivers with the tools and resources necessary to provide the best care possible for their loved ones.
Are you interested in talking with a care coach to receive expert help caring for your elderly loved ones?
The home care experts at Stowell Associates in Wisconsin have provided exceptional in-home care to elderly adults and support to family caregivers for nearly four decades. This past year, we realized that many adult children and family caregivers don’t have easy access to professional home care assistance. We decided to leverage virtual communication technology to connect our expert Care Coaches to family caregivers around the nation. For $100/month, you can access professional eldercare advice and support.
Contact us today to set up a time to talk with a Care Coach and start a coaching relationship. We’ll take you through the risk assessment process and help you identify the top areas of concern.
