About a year ago I started looking for a caregiver to help care for my wife. I called four different companies who advertised that they could provide caregiver support. Only three of them agreed to actually come and look at my situation and discuss what they could offer. I found that all three had basically the same options. They would provide a minimum of three or four days a week with a minimum of four hours at a time. And they were all charging $30 an hour.
At that time, I did not need that much support, what I really needed was somebody who could be here to watch her for three hours or so once a week, so I could go shopping, or doctor's appointments, or whatever else I needed to do. No one was able to meet that need.
I finally found someone through the friend of a friend who was a nurse with several years’ experience in a caregiver support environment. She was willing to work private duty for $16.00 an hour for three hours once a week. Because of her own physical problems, she was not able to help with the direct care of my wife. That actually worked quite well until I had some personal physical problems that made it impossible for me to continue to take care of my wife by myself. I simply couldn't get her in or out of bed.
Around the 1st of September I actually signed a contract with Senior Helpers in Durham to provide help four hours in the morning and four hours in the evening to help with those times when I needed assistance getting my wife in and out of bed. The first person they sent was not a good fit and after three weeks they switched me to a different person who has proven to be an excellent fit. She does some lighthouse work, loads the dishwasher, puts away the clean dishes, folds the laundry and does other chores as needed.
This new caregiver is a trained nurse CNA with ten or more years working in the field of dementia. She is excellent at helping me solve some of the problems that we have been faced with when it comes to caring for my wife. This is a considerable expense because at $30 an hour it adds up to about $1200 a week. However, that is far less that it would cost me to put my wife in a care facility and I am convinced that no care facility can provide the care for her that I can in my home setting. Also, my wife has been adamant from the beginning of this process that she wants to stay at home if there's any way possible for that to happen.
I should also point out that two weeks after I signed the contract Senior Helpers went out of business, closed up and moved their people to a company called East Carolina Home Care. I'm still assessing East Carolina Home Care and their ability to continue to provide me with the kind of help that I need but so far it's been OK.
