Christopher volunteers as a Dementia Champion for the Alzheimer’s Society.
He leads the Dementia Friends session and recently delivered a session at City Hall in London as part of the London Mayor’s drive to make London the most dementia friendly city in the world.
Here I share the Alzheimer’s Society’s bookshelf analogy about dementia.
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Marvellous mornings...
CareChooser’s private carers help your elderly parents have marvellous mornings.
Why focus on marvellous mornings?
Because marvellous mornings set up marvellous days & marvellous evenings...
... So a random home carer rushes in and gets ‘em out of bed & runs…
No, no…
Not the care agency thing.
Rushed mornings, set up chaotic and stressed days…
The same private carer will come each morning. (choose early, mid-morning or late morning)
The carer helps your parent get up, takes care to choose what to wear, helps them to wash and brush & style their hair.
They’ll settle them down for breakfast and clear away too. Get them ready and settled to start the day, perhaps a cup of tea together or one carer takes her client for a walk each day, photographing butterflies... & all sorts.
All the other bits & pieces are all taken care off; housekeeping, laundry etc.
No rushing, no stressing.
Same familiar face.
The above is tracked online, you’ll know from wherever you are that ALL is WELL.
We can’t help everyone (We won’t compromise on the quality of our home carers like others do).
We’ll check to see if you’re a good fit to work with us & our carers.
If you’re fed up of manic, chaotic mornings drop me a message.
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Hi, I'm Christopher the founder of CareChooser. We match carers to clients needing care in their home. I’m also a Dementia Friend and a Dementia Friends Champion. Recently I shared an article from Good Housekeeping magazine on research done by the University of California proving sadly that loneliness plays a large role in the decline of the elderly.
So I thought I'd spend a few minutes thinking about ideas about how to defeat loneliness.
1. Invite some one around for tea or go to theirs…
2. If you fancy volunteering there is a great organisation called Contact the Elderly. You can volunteer to have tea with the elderly. I think I'd be pretty good at that!
3. A smile always always goes a long way and helps to defeat loneliness.
4. Keep in touch via the telephone.
5. Get the person a diary and start to fill in some events or calls on different days.
6. Number 6 is interesting, how about signing up to Borrow My Doggy or in my case, Borrow My Chicken.
If anyone else has any ideas about how we can defeat loneliness, post some ideas below.
All the best, Christopher
You've got a million things to do.
We know the feeling. CareChooser's home care team use simple technology to help.
1. Trello - A fantastic to do list like no other. Again you can see it on your phone via an app or online. Looks great, very easy to use. See multiple to do lists open at the same time. You can have different lists for parents, children, shopping... https://trello.com/christopher41031910/recommend
2. Apple's Notepad -
Looks great, simple to use, you can see your notes on your iPhone and iPad.
Great for keeping track of longer thoughts and things to do.
3. Alerts for Calendar - Add items to your calendar and then set an alert to beep and remind you at the time, 10 mins, an hour or days before. Great for remebering home care consultations, pay bills and sending cards... on time... (usually!)
We often get asked how we find our carers. We're asked how we check and approve them and what we check and approve.
We base our search for carers on many criteria, good strong Health and Social Care qualifications, experience and additional skills to name a few but we also have extra criteria that carers must comply with to join us. Firstly they must be able to prove through face-to-face competency based questions that they are able to meet our values and that they have it within them to provide that extra personal touch of quality that sets us apart. Then there's the final, crucial criteria - 'The Mum Test'. We ask ourselves...
Would they do for our Mum/Dad?
Once carers have passed these criteria during application, phone and then face-to-face interviews we then approve Enhanced Disclosure Barring Service (DBS) checks, identity checks, right to work checks and checks of qualifications. We work with our provider of choice UCheck to verify and approve identity and DBS checks.
If you're looking for hourly or live in care, all our carers have passed 'The Mum Test'.
Get in touch with CareChooser today on 0208 886 0686 or hello@carechooser.com
The festive, holiday period and in particular the new year can trigger happy memories but also bring back feelings of pain and sadness. Try to strike a balance acknowledging the pain and sadness the person may be feeling whilst also refocusing on the positive.
The new year is invariably a time to reflect and look forward. This could be a time where many different feelings come to the fore. There may be a great deal of sadness for an older person if they perceive themselves as a burden and those who are carers for their parents or grandparents may be feeling guilt that they can’t do more or tired and physically and emotionally drained if they are doing too much.
These kinds of feelings are best discussed honestly. Acknowledge but challenge negative language like ‘burden’. We encourage independence for older people no matter what their abilities and alter the amount of support depending on this.
