Finding the Right Home Caregiver: Home Care Options Takes a Personalized Approach

The decision to bring a home health aide into your home is an important one. The right home care agency will work hard to match you with the perfect caregiver for your needs and ensure that they are licensed, certified, reliable, and trustworthy so that you can rest assured that you are in excellent hands.

What Is Home Care?

Home Care Options, a Christian Health service, provides home health services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a team of certified and licensed home health aides.

“Our mission is to assist individuals and families to maintain a healthy, stable environment and provide professionally supervised health services to ensure the quality of life and help them be as independent as possible,” said Sandra Canion, MBA, Human Resource Coordinator at Home Care Options.

Professional aides offer assistance with a variety of activities of daily living, including:

• Medication reminders
• Assistance with bathing, grooming, and dressing
• Meal preparation
• Light housekeeping
• Mobility assistance, such as going outside and walking with the client
• Laundry
• Light shopping

How Home Care Options Finds the Perfect Caregiver for You

When bringing a caregiver into your home, it is essential that you know they are trustworthy and skilled. Home Care Options is an accredited agency with high standards to uphold, and each home health aide candidate is diligently screened during recruitment to ensure they are certified by the state of New Jersey and verify their licensure. All aides must show proof of a recent physical and up-to-date vaccinations, share professional references, and pass a thorough background check. Additionally, the staff nurse ensures that each aide meets a clinical competency checklist.

Once aides are thoroughly screened to determine that they are knowledgeable, skilled, and reliable, Home Care Options diligently works to appropriately match them to the clients. A nurse visits each client’s home to do a thorough assessment, identify their needs, and develop a plan of care, and then aides are assigned to the client based on those needs.

Safety is always the most important consider for the clients and aides at Home Care Options. Leadership talks to the aides extensively about their experiences to identify their strengths and the type of client they are most comfortable with. They make sure the client and caregiver are a match not only from a skills perspective but also from a personality perspective. For example, if a client needs coaching to eat or take medications or is isolated and just needs someone to talk to, Home Care Options will find the aide best suited to that type of care. The team works hard to match each client with an aide who will engage in conversation, build trust, and meet all their needs.

Home Care Options has a nurse on-call 24-7 in case any issue arises, and makes regular follow-up calls and visits with the client and their family members to ensure everything is going smoothly and that the caregiver is still an optimal match for the client.

“Trust is so important for our clients and their family members,” said Alaina Nemes, RN, Director of Nursing at Home Care Options. “You are leaving your loved one in someone else’s hands, so we make sure we are addressing all of their needs and that they feel safe and comfortable with our aides.”

Although getting used to a home health aide can be challenging, Home Care Options’ many success stories prove that significant thought and care go into matching the perfect aide with every client. The team at Home Care Options knows how difficult it is to have someone come to your home daily when you’re used to your own routine. That’s why it’s so important to make sure the aide is engaging and respectful of every client’s needs and home so that you or your loved one will look forward to the aide coming to help, prepare a meal, or sit and chat.

“We have many long-term clients with aides who have been with them for a long time, and they become like family,” said Alaina.

Is Home Care Options Right for You?

If you think professional home health services might be right for you or your loved one, please visit ChristianHealthNJ.info/HomeCareOptions, call (201) 897-5550, or send an email to HCO@ChristianHealthNJ.org for more information.