Cathie Ramey
RedwoodAge.com

Believe it or not, the caregiver you bring into your parents' home may know less about caring for them than you do.

The majority of Americans who hire in-home help for elder family members believe these workers have been formally trained, according to a recent Harris Interactive survey. In reality, there are no national standards or requirements for in-home caregivers, meaning someone with no experience or qualifications can be placed in a senior's home to care for them.   

In response, a panel of  professionals in the fields of aging and caregiving have recommended national training standards. The suggestion comes in Developing National In-Home Caregiver Training Standards, a report that examines the growing need for classes, accreditation and certification.

The latest research goes hand-in-hand with a second study that focused on long-term care needs in America. That study, citing Census Bureau statistics, projects the number of 85-year-olds in the US to increase five fold between 2000 and 2050 due to the aging of 78 million boomers. 

"We asked experts whether national standards for caregiver training and curricula were desirable and/or practical," says Dr. Robert Butler, co-director of the Caregiving Project for Older Americans, a joint venture of the International Longevity Center-USA and the Schmieding Center for Senior Health and Education..  "The consensus was a resounding 'yes' and experts agreed the standards would provide some basic assurance of the quality of care received in the home."

'Crisis' Hiring
The importance of caregiving becomes apparent when families are faced with a sudden need, often after a medical crisis involving an older family member.  Suddenly, that person may need help with shopping, cooking, bathing, dressing, lifting, transferring, transporting and following a specific medication regimen.

If  informal caregiving by friends and family is not possible or falls short, families try to find outside help. Once the decision to hire a caregiver is made, families face the challenge of finding someone affordable, reliable and trustworthy.  Medicare doesn't cover assisted living or in-home care costs, which are spiraling upward at an alarming rate.

Often, families hire strangers as caregivers without conducting the appropriate background checks. Other families turn to local home care agencies for help and may pay higher fees as a result.  

Because there are no standards for training, it's difficult to compare the quality of caregivers from one home care agency to those from another.

What to Do?
Along with identifying the lack of uniform standards for elder caregiving the blue-ribbon panel developed recommendations designed to create innovative and affordable new approaches to train caregivers.

Recommendations include:

1. Adopt the term Geriatric Home Caregiver (GHC) to denote a
professionally trained caregiver of older adults in home settings.

2. Establish uniform national standards for training GHCs to be used by
everyone who creates curricula.

3. Implement a process for accreditation of all training curricula for
GHCs.

4. Develop a certification process for the GHC.

5. Set a standard for annual continuing education for GHCs.

6. Promote the creation of a career ladder that could further attract
individuals to this work-force.

7. Facilitate the establishment of a national home caregivers
organization.