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Care For Your Emotional Health

Along with the emotional rewards that may come from helping an older family member maintain safe and with a good quality of life, the responsibilities may take a toll on a caretaker’s emotional well-being. A reverse in roles when taking care of an aging parent can be especially difficult.

Tips for managing your physical health while caring for an aging family member

With Americans living longer lives and often needing assistance to ensure their well-being, more people are providing care for an aging family member. New additions to our vocabulary like ‘sandwich generation’ and ‘caregiver stress,’ have emerged from this reality.

California Governor Brown signed the California Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, AB 241, into law on September 26, 2013. The regulations become effective January 1, 2014.

What does this mean to California household employers?

More families are considering the possibility of privately hiring senior home care for someone it their family as a way to help their loved ones age in place in a safe and happy environment. This is uncharted territory for most people, and adult children who may have hired nannies to care for their children years ago wonder what they need to consider when hiring senior home care assistance.

Our aging parents deal with physical and sometimes mental declines that challenge their ability to completely take care of themselves on their own.  They don’t like the idea of moving out of their homes to a senior care facility.  How will they safely age at home, in a safe and happy environment?

Today an estimated 3.4 million senior home care givers provide support services to an aging population that emphatically wants to ‘age in place.’ To meet continued demand, the U.S. needs an additional 1.6 million caregivers by 2020. While most families turn to senior care agencies to provide support personnel to aging family members, an increasing number of families prefer to hire directly, citing both reduced costs and greater control over caregiver selection as their primary motivations.

The Nanny Community is formed by a hard working, hands on team of professionals.  I am so fortunate to network with nannies across the country, and regularly attend nanny educational forums.  I am amazed by the commitment, continuous learning, effort and passion of these women, dedicated to the wellbeing of our children and to make this world a better one! 

Monitoring an aging parent’s health

Each year, projections for the average life expectancy of Americans trend up. There are differences by gender, a man reaching age 65 today can expect to live, on average, until age 84; for a woman the average expectation is 86. In addition to these averages from the Social Security Administration, about one out of every four 65-year-olds today is expected to live past age 90, and one out of 10 past age 95.

The US Department of Labor on September 17, 2013 issued revised rules within the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) that impact employers of senior caregivers that go into effect January 1, 2015. A key revision is the definition of what constitutes companionship care.

Why is defining 'companionship care' important?

Today, all senior caregivers who provide companionship care in the private home of an individual with disabilities or the elderly are exempt from the minimum wage and overtime protections of the FLSA, and are defined as providing “companion care services.”  The tasks and duties that constitute companionship care today are rather broad, and the rules that go into effect January 2015 significantly narrow the tasks and duties definitions.  While some privately employed companions will continue to fit the designation of companion caregivers, the new rules will not permit agency-employed caregivers to be classified as companions, period.

Agency-employed caregivers will all be covered by minimum wage and overtime FLSA protections. Agency-employed caregivers may not be classified as companions for wage and hour compliance. Only privately employed senior caregivers providing bona fide companionship care services may qualify for this exemption.