The Limits To Family Care Givers

The supervision of care or hands-on care from informal care givers is limited to activities that don't require a skilled nursing background. Lifting, bathing,dressing diapering, toileting and helping with walking can be a challenge to family caregivers because the don't have the proper tools or are not trained in this area. Or the children of elderly care recipients may have difficulty dealing with cleaning messy bottoms or bathing their parents. another problem may be handling errant behavior from dementia or depression.

Because of this, some families bring in paid providers to help with lifting, walking, bathing, incontinence, toileting, dressing and supervision. Home care is almost always provided in the home of the recipient or the home of a family member. Home care may under certain circumstances be offered in other settings such as group homes or independent retirement communities.

As a general rule government programs will not pay for long term care unless there is a skilled medical neeed, Thr predominance of care provided in the home is non-medical and therefore government programs will not pay. Government programs will pay for home care that is non-medical under certain conditions. The care-recipient must be low income and have few assets. Although Medicaid and other state programs do not consider the value of the patients home when calculating eligibility.