CAREGiver Qualifications
In a nutshell, caregiving is anything you do that enhances the quality of life for seniors and helps keep them independent. Caregiving encompasses many responsibilities, and many caregivers don't even realise they are providing this service.
If you regularly provide emotional support for an elderly person, you could be considered a caregiver. If you're picking up prescriptions or taking a senior to a doctor's appointment, you're a caregiver. If you're helping an older adult around the house or paying the bills, you can add the caregiver title to your CV.
As a professional CAREGiver, you have the opportunity to expand these skills into a rewarding, fulfilling profession that can significantly enhance the quality of a senior's life. CAREGivers provide a variety of non-medical services that allow seniors to remain in their homes, including companionship and home helper services.
Companionship services are those that stimulate, encourage, and assist an individual. Primary responsibilities of companionship services include:
- Providing companionship and conversation
- Providing stabilisation and assistance with walking
- Preparing meals and cleaning up meal-related items
- Providing medication and appointment reminders
Home helper services generally involve light housekeeping, errands, or incidental transportation. Primary responsibilities include:
- Performing light housekeeping tasks such as dusting, vacuuming, making beds, changing linens, cleaning bathrooms and kitchens, etc.
- Washing and ironing laundry
- Running errands
- Accompanying clients to appointments
Other responsibilities might be added to these lists, depending on your situation, but the most important and most rewarding aspect of a career in caregiving is the value you bring to a senior's life.
At Home Instead Senior Care, we recognise the important role training and education play in preparing and supporting our CAREGivers.
CAREGiver Training and Support
From the moment you're hired, your
local Home Instead Senior Care office will offer you a variety of initial and on-going training opportunities to help you enhance your caregiving skills. Each new employee is provided with our CAREGiver training programme that includes:
• FETAC Level 5 Module - Practical Home Care Skills
• Client safety and safety in the home
• Safe client moving and handling
• Client confidentiality
• Communications in caring
• Food hygiene and meal preparation
• Personal care
• Person Centred dementia care (Training supported by Dementia Services Information and Development Centre, St James Hospital)
• Caring for people with chronic conditions such as Arthritis (Training approved by Arthritis Ireland)
• Palliative care training is provided to help CAREGivers understand the terminally ill person. Training is provided by the Irish Hospice Foundation and Our Lady's Hospice.
In addition, regular CAREGiver meetings allow you to share with and learn from other caregiving professionals. Plus your office staff are available any time to help answer questions and provide support. And as a Home Instead CAREGiver, you will be professionally trained, insured, thoroughly screened, Garda checked matched to meet the client's needs.
"Our primary mission is to keep seniors independent for as long as possible, and that means making sure CAREGivers have the tools and training they need to provide older adults with the highest quality care," said Ed Murphy, CEO of the Home Instead Senior Care. "We offer resources and experiences that will benefit our employees in future endeavors they might choose."
What's in it for you?
- No medical experience necessary
- Flexible scheduling - perfect for retirees
- Training provided
- Supplemental income
- Very rewarding
- A way to meet and interact with others outside your home