Choosing Qualified Caregivers for Safety

Families do the best they can if they're out of state and they have to hire a caregiver to come in and provide that person support. I would tell people you want to be extremely careful with that. You do not want to take a friend of a friend who's a nurse practitioner. You don't want to say, "Oh, well, my neighbor can do it." Very informal setups are where we kind of see these issues, because these are not trained professionals. They're just people that are kind of looking for this opportunity. And unfortunately, we do see that a lot here with our aging population.

So, if you need to have care provided to a family member through in-home care or caregiver, you definitely want to go through a reputable service that does the background checks. These people need to be licensed. Ask a lot of questions. It is not annoying. It is not overstepping. Think of it as if you would need a babysitter for your 2-year-old. You're going to have a lot of questions for that person. You need to make sure who this person is.

And, you know, life's kind of a cycle. We all come into this world one way, and if we stay long enough, we go out kind of the same. And so, I think a lot of people maybe feel like, "Ooh, if I ask, I'm annoying," or "I don't want to overstep," and it's like, "No, this is your family member and you need to be very, very careful."