Bespoke domiciliary care offers families high-quality care in the comfort of their own home. The ongoing support, built around a service user’s individual schedule and environment, can be a fantastic solution to an exceptionally difficult problem – if you’re feeling anxious about the responsibility of looking after a sick loved one on a long-term and regular basis, then domiciliary care will help ease your concerns and provide valuable help to you and your family.
What is domiciliary care?
An individual might need help from a domiciliary care worker if they are struggling with everyday activities and household tasks due to a medical condition or natural symptoms of aging. These can be simple tasks such as meal preparation and daily chores, or more clinical tasks such as stoma and catheter management. You might find it challenging to dedicate your time and routine to looking after a loved one in need of high-quality social care as a result of these necessary requirements. This is where domiciliary care plays a major role in the long-term holistic welfare of you and your loved one.
The top 5 benefits of domiciliary care
Are you caring for a sick loved one who is struggling? Do you need a way to feel more in control of the situation? Domiciliary care offers a number of invaluable solutions for you and your loved one. Here are the top five.
1. Limited disruption
There is a multitude of care assistance options available to help service users and their families live a high-quality and full life. However, these options have predominantly involved a service user entirely uprooting from their surroundings in order to live in a care home which could make matters worse. Being unwell is upsetting for both the service user and family members, and if a service user suffers from memory loss caused by dementia, unfamiliar surroundings can induce feelings of instability and lead to high levels of distress for both them and in turn their family. A comfortable home environment makes the situation easier to cope with for everybody involved in the welfare of the service user.
With domiciliary care, the carer fully adapts to the environment of the service user, lives out their daily routine using familiar household equipment, and incorporates commonplace structures into their one-on-one person-centred care. In providing care within the home of the service user, a domiciliary care worker helps limit disruption to a service user’s life, whilst enabling them to maintain a certain level of independence based on their strengths using assistive technology, if need be, such as wheelchairs, profiling beds, walking frames and sticks, boosting their happiness and energy levels significantly.
2. Companionship
Domiciliary care involves a carer coming to the home of the service user, providing one-to-one person-centered around a service user’s specific needs. These visits could be from as little as 30 minutes a week to all-day and overnight. Naturally, this attentive and personalised form of social care creates a strong bond between the domiciliary care worker and the service user, offering the service user a significant level of companionship during a difficult and isolating period of time in their livelihood.
In Care Home facilities, service users do not receive the same level of personalised care from a single individual primary carer. With the number of over-50s experiencing loneliness expected to reach two million by 2025/6, this companionship is a key advantage of domiciliary care.
3. Flexibility
Domiciliary care is entirely flexible depending on a service user’s and family members’ needs. Whether a service user requires around-the-clock care involving more complex clinical practices such as pain management and PEG feeding, or simply a weekly visit from a carer to help with household chores and provide social support, the structure of a service user’s domiciliary care in relation to timings and practices is centered around their individual needs and schedule. This flexibility eases anxiety for both the service user and their family members.
4. Affordability
One of the main struggles of service users and their family members is being able to afford the care they deserve. This adds increased levels of distress for people already dealing with an upsetting situation. The cost of private accommodation for care can be staggering, with individual service users paying an average cost of approximately £32,000 for the first year.
With domiciliary care, you control the level of care that a service user receives. Therefore, you control its cost. This benefit is ideal for service users who require lower maintenance social care, such as meal preparation once a week or help with household tasks on a weekly basis. It is not cost-effective to invest in private accommodation for a service user who needs this level of care, because there are many things they can still do independently at home.
5. Take back your life
The wonderful thing about domiciliary care is that it allows service users and their family members to take back control of their life. When a loved one is sick, families often feel a lack of control over their present and future. How will they cope emotionally and financially? How should they adapt their schedule around their loved one’s needs? A domiciliary care worker gives families the stability and flexibility they need to take control of an exceptionally difficult situation. In developing the service user’s independence in familiar structures and a support system, they are once again able to experience the life they’ve always had.
There are many benefits to domiciliary care that will help your family through this taxing period. If you’re considering domiciliary care for your loved one and want to find out more on what Care24Seven offers, click here.
