- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Two families have partnered together to create an amazing home for their two sons. They are currently looking for a live-in caregiver who will do a lot of the coordination of their daily life. A bit of their ad is below and they are really interested in the feedback/advice from other families who have done this before. Particularly how you interviewed them and involved your son/daughter in the process.
Here’s the Ad:
With the support of Community Living Toronto, two young men with an intellectual disability (one with physical disabilities and the other hearing impaired) are seeking a live in caregiver to provide support and companionship in their newly built downtown apartment in the Lakeshore & Spadina area of Toronto.The Caregiver/Coordinator role is supported by:
• Family
• Overnight support
• Homecare support morning and evening
• Day Supporters who will be with the two young men during the day
Hours of Support:
• Mornings 8-10am & Afternoons 4pm-bedtime
• Week begins Sunday evening around 6pm until Friday noonYour role will be to provide:
• Co-ordination of their social calendar, appointments, transportation, ordering of supplies
• Grocery shopping, healthy meals, light housekeeping, some laundry support
• Leadership & effective communication/team work with all other supporters involved
• A nurturing home environment
During the day, while the men are out, the caregiver is free to pursue his/her own interests, as long as the hours can be coordinated with the supports required by the men. The caregiver can keep their own apartment or make this apartment their home. Weekend staff will be scheduled to cover the caregiver’s time off.
These young men are seeking someone who is committed to building a long-term relationship and stable home environment. In return you will receive free accommodation and earn a monthly income. Other benefits include 2.5 days off each week, paid vacation negotiated with the families, computer/internet access, support from the gentlemen’s family and a great living environment in a young, vibrant downtown community.
The gentlemen and their families are open to either a male or female caregiver; preference being given to the candidate who demonstrates a high degree of effective & clear communication, organization, ability to facilitate, coordinate and support with enthusiasm and compassion. Basic sign language or a willingness to learn is a must for the successful applicant.I was very interested in reading about your model as we have also been trying to set up a home for our son and his friend, along with someone to live in to support them, in our community in North Vancouver. Your schedule of set hours and time off sounds very workable to me. Our process started out with a family directed process to find the individual to support our young adults and we are now using a community living agency. We do not have a LIGHTS model organization in Vancouver but I think this type of organization would be very helpful in BC as we have many families trying to set up supported living situations for their adult children. The difficulty we have is the funding model in our province is a flat rate home share contractor rate, which may work when people are bringing someone with a disability to live in their home, but does not work so well when it is the supported individual’s own home. The reason the rate associated with the home share model is problematic, is it is a flat rate with 24/7 responsibility. Our son has community inclusion support hours during the day, 6 hours, and his friend has a job one day and some community programs the other days. Your model sounds similar to ours in the weekly concept (ours was 7-10 and 4 to bedtime and then overnight, with daytime responsibility only if needed) but with our homeshare model they would then be responsible all weekend too. Finding someone has proved impossible (we had one short failed arrangement) and now I am trying to put together a hybrid of one person on the flat home share rate and some paid staff on the weekend–with both our families covering Sundays–not really the ideal model for adult autonomy. As far as our hiring process goes, each family has interviewed the candidate (now with the agency involved they do the initial interview) and then a meeting is set up with each family and our young adult present. We also had the person (in our short lived arrangement) over for dinner and I took her out to a concert with our two young adults so they could all get to know each other. I would like to talk to you about the financial piece of your staffing model if you would be willing to discuss this with me privately. Kind regards, Pat
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.