Give me a break: home respite care for family caregivers in Calgary
Caring for a loved one at home is hard work. As a partner or family caregiver, you’ll have devoted many thousands of hours meeting their needs, often at the expense of your own. Alongside providing personal care, you’ll probably be taking care of all the paperwork, the cooking and food ordering, household budget management, and doing all the household tasks from laundry to cleaning, plus managing medication and attending medical appointments. No wonder providing care at home seems a full-time job in itself, leaving little time for much else.
However, continuous caregiving like this without a break can be physically and emotionally exhausting. What’s more, if you don’t get a break from caring, you may develop chronic fatigue, suffer from sleep deprivation, and be increasingly likely to fall ill or injure yourself.
The pressure of continually providing care means many family carers experience burnout. Burnout is when you are so physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted that it affects your physical and mental health, and even your own ability to care effectively.
Respite care to the rescue
That’s why respite care is so important. Respite care services allow you to take a break, get out of the house, have a rest, attend your own medical appointments, go to the gym, or enjoy a catch-up lunch with friends. Professional respite care from Vytality at Home also gives you something else: peace of mind. You can enjoy a break knowing that your loved one is being looked after by a friendly, compassionate caregiver with the 24/7 support of an experienced and dedicated Calgary home care company.
Looking for respite care in Calgary?
We’re here to help with expert home care services to support you in your caregiver role. Contact us to discuss your requirements or those of a loved one:
Respite care from Vytality at Home – FAQs
As a leading home care company in Calgary, we have the experience and caregivers available to offer home care respite services that match your needs.
• Who are your respite care services for?
Most people who need respite care services here in Calgary are the primary family caregiver. In this article, the primary caregiver is:
“A family member, friend or neighbour who takes on an unpaid caring role for someone who needs help due to a physical or cognitive condition, an injury or a chronic life-limiting illness.” (2)
• What are the benefits of regular respite home care?
A regular break every week (or more) means you can enjoy doing what you like to do, more often. Whether it’s a round of golf, lunch with old friends, a fitness class, or social group, our caregivers will take exceptional care of your loved one while you enjoy being you for a few hours. With our affordable three hour care visits, there’s time for you to be yourself, even if it’s just to have some quiet time, go for a run, or catch up on some sleep! A full day of respite every week allows you to have some time to look forward to, and also provides you and your loved one with different experiences to talk about too.
• Do you offer overnight respite care?
Yes, and it’s especially important if caring for a loved one is affecting your sleep. Sleep deprivation (less than 7 hours a night) is a major problem for family caregivers. Apart from making you feel tired all day, an ongoing lack of quality, uninterrupted sleep can seriously affect your health, increasing your risk of chronic diseases including depression and type 2 diabetes. (1) Overnight respite care ensures you can get the rest you need without worry over your loved one. Our caregiver is in your home for a full 12 hours, awake and ready to help reassure your loved one should they need help anytime during the night. If you want a longer period of cover, no problem; a new, fresh caregiver can arrive in the morning to take over from their night-time colleague.
• Can you provide vacation respite care in Calgary?
Whether you’d love a weekend break or planning a week-long vacation, our team can help. At Vytality at Home, we can provide expert care in your home 24 hours a day, as a combination of overnight and daytime care. There is no need to put your loved one through the upheaval of moving into a care home for a week – our caregivers come to you. Our caregivers also write an end of shift update in our Vytality Family Portal, so you can check out what’s been happening, online, anytime, wherever you are.
• Do you offer live-in respite home care?
Some care agencies offer live-in respite care using a single live-in caregiver for the whole period. We don’t. Our caregivers come for a 12 hour period, and then a colleague takes over. So each caregiver is fresh, awake, and not tired themselves if your loved one had needed assistance in the night.
• Can you help with short notice and short term respite care in Calgary?
Sometimes you need respite help at short notice. Whilst we cannot guarantee we can help, we do have over 100 caregivers working with us, many more than other smaller care agencies in Calgary. It’s always worth giving us a call.
• Can you offer convalescent care in my own home?
If you need help after an accident or on leaving hospital, we can help with short-term home-based convalescent care– just call us to discuss your requirements. Our trusted partners can also provide other health services that may not be provided in your discharge care plan, such as physio and footcare.
Three more benefits of respite care in Calgary
• Combatting loneliness
Caregiving for a loved one can also be remarkably lonely. Spending all day every day with a person with limited conversation, and little opportunity to create something new to talk about yourself, can leave both caregiver and cared for isolated from the outside world beyond the rounds of medical appointments and treatments. Just as people living alone can be prone to stress, anxiety and depression, so can caregivers.
Respite care is a psychological break as well as a physical one. It allows you to be yourself again, to reconnect with your own friends and social network, and rejoin your local community.
• Rebuilding relationships
Respite care isn’t just for the caregivers, it’s also for the person being cared for. As the saying goes, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder”. Even in the most loving of families, tensions and resentments can build, and respite care provides a vital safety valve so both parties get a break from each other. We’ve said it before but it is so worth repeating; new carer experiences and interactions give your loved one something new to talk about, especially when their world may be limited by lack of mobility and/or ill health.
• More family time
Being a family carer for one person affects the whole family. Respite care can give you back time that you can all spend together as a family, and give you more opportunities to do what you and the family enjoy.
For more info on respite care, just contact us:
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DISCLAIMER:
This article is for general information purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult your physician / health care provider if you have any questions about your health.
About the author
Nicole Dyer is Co-Founder & Co-President of Vytality at Home. She is a seasoned leader in senior living and healthcare operations, with over 20 years of experience driving innovation and growth in the sector. Nicole is a member of CPHR Alberta, and is an Ad Hoc Board Member and Administrator for Gordie Howe CARES, a charity working for the advancement of Alzheimer’s and dementia-related programming and events in Calgary.
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SOURCES:
(1) 2022, Jun 8 | Chaput JP, Carrier J, Bastien C, Gariépy G, Janssen I. | Economic burden of insufficient sleep duration in Canadian adults. Sleep Health. | Article| (3):298-302. doi: 10.1016/j.sleh.2022.02.001. | Epub 2022 Apr 8. PMID: 35400617. | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35400617/
(2) Carers Canada website | https://www.carerscanada.ca/about-us/
