Hiring an Agency vs Hiring a Private Caregiver
There are many advantages to hiring a care agency vs. hiring a care giver on your own. Take a look at the comparisons below.
| Comforts of Home – Care | Private | |
| Caregiver selection | Access to over 200 caregivers who are carefully selected: screened, bonded and insured | Run an ad and hope for the best |
| Training | Mandatory initial and continuous ongoing training | none |
| Oversite of Care | Initial assessment for social, mobility, safety, and cognitive impairment – provides support and structure to the family | none |
| Ongoing Supervision | Caregivers are held accountable to the careplan with ongoing spot checks provided by Client Care Coordinator. Changing needs of client are assessed regularly | Answer to the family or client. Caregiver may begin to get comfortable and make increasing demands. Family is uncomfortable correcting caregiver because they don’t want to lose her. |
| Changes in Schedule | Easily handled by COHC’s large resources. | Caregiver may not be available for changes in schedule or increases in care responsibilities |
| Regular Caregiver not available | Caregiver can easily be substituted temporarily or permanently, quickly and easily for holidays or sick days | Depending on 1 or 2 caregivers is very limiting and restricting |
| Payroll and Insurance | All source deductions including WCB handled by company | Tedious and cumbersome set up of EI, CPP, WCB, taxes, additional Insurance policy. Potential issues with CRA and Employment Standards |