Your Options
Nursing Homes
Traditionally, when the immediate family are no longer in a position to provide the care the elderly person needs, the elderly person moves into a nursing home. There a number of important factors to be taken into consideration with the nursing home option:
Nursing home care means that the elderly person has to leave their family and their home. They move to a new environment away from what may have been their home for many, many years. This can lead to the elderly person experiencing a sense of loss of connection with their family, home and community. This can be a very stressful and emotional experience not only for the elderly person but for the whole family.
The elderly person will need to adjust to the routine and schedule of the nursing home. Meal times will be at set times as will set times for activities. The elderly person may find these fixed times difficult to adjust to. There may also be a sense of loss of choice and loss of flexibility that the elderly person would have enjoyed in their own home.
Nursing homes are very expensive. They can cost anywhere from €4,000 to €6,000 per month.
Visiting Care
There are 2 main types of visiting carer: Government (HSE) funded homehelp or private visiting carers that families pay for privately themselves.
HSE Home Help (also called HSE Home Support Service):
You need to apply for this HSE Home Help through your local public health nurse or if your relative is in hospital, the social work team there will help you to organise HSE Home Help before your relative is discharged from hospital.
The amount of HSE Home Help you will be allocated depends on your relative's care needs and the budget available.
Usually, if your relative's care needs are relatively high, the Home Help will amount to 1 to 3 visits per day, 5 to 7 days per week.
Private Care Agencies:
To make up for the shortfall in publicly funded services, private organisations provide visiting carers / care assistants. These private organisations employ carers who they then schedule to visit many elderly people in a specific area each week. The client (i.e. the elderly person or their family) pays the private organisation an hourly fee of between €25 to €30 per hour and the private organisation in turn pays the carer a salary. This is a very very expensive option if you need more than just a few hours of home care per week.
Live-in Care
Our service is different from the other two options (i.e. nursing homes and visiting carers). We believe that our service is also better than the above two options.
With our service, the elderly person can remain at home (unlike the nursing home option) and gets the dedicated one-to-one care that neither nursing home nor visiting carer can provide.
Our live-in carer is there for you and only you. They are not tied to some organisation’s schedule. They are not compelled to go from client to client or house to house like staff in a nursing home or visiting carers do. They are there for you.
When you compare the costs of nursing homes, visiting carers and ALHomecare live-in carers, you will see that there is a massive cost saving too.
Nursing Homes cost €4,000 to €6,000 per month:
Nursing homes are large organisations with considerable costs and overheads. When you live at home and avail of a live-in carer you can avoid a lot of unnecessary costs that only arise when you stay in a nursing home. For example, when you are stay at home, you already have comfortable accommodation and you will most probably have a spare room for your live-in carer to stay in.
Visiting carers cost €25 to €30 per hour:
This is expensive because the care agency makes money from every hour the carer works for you. Nearly half of the €25 to €30 hour per hour goes to the agency. The carer is usually paid approximately €13 gross per hour and has no guaranteed minimum number of hours of work each week.
The cost is lower for you because you are paying the carer directly for her work. This is fairer for you and fair for the carer. And this means the cost to you works out nearly half the cost of a visiting care agency.
And because you are giving the carer free accommodation and food, you have the benefit of having someone in your relative's home at night, in case of an emergency.
Your carer has the guarantee of 35 hours work per week. She/He is caring for just one person. She/He has the satisfaction of knowing that she/he is able to provide excellent care, which is tailored to your relative's needs.
Our live-in homecare service is a genuine win-win solution to homecare.