Home Care Assistance is Changing the Way the World Ages. This is the latest installment of our “How To” series, where we lay out smart and easy-to-understand advice on navigating the aging process.
As General Manager of Operations, Joey works hand in hand with facilities across the city to ensure consistent care that goes beyond the basics to deliver something truly special. This month, he took us behind the scenes to understand what goes into staffing up Montreal’s nursing homes with quality caregivers who are deeply committed to providing exceptional care.
Joey, many people probably don’t realize that Home Care Assistance Montreal caregivers work within local nursing homes, in addition to individual families whose seniors live independently in their own house. Can you tell us about the kind of services your team provides?
Absolutely. We maintain a very high standard of caregivers within our team. We have an established network of caregivers. This has always allowed us to offer consistency in our caregiving. The families we work with on an individual basis know they can count on us to find the right fit for their loved one, invest in the care plan and relationship, and then have back-up support available in case anything pops up. Now, we also channel those capabilities into the way we partner with nursing homes.
Especially over the course of the pandemic, it’s been tough for these facilities to maintain their staff while respecting all of the different health guidelines. Our Home Care Assistance Montreal caregivers have played a very big part filling gaps at these facilities over the last two years. Because our team is vast, well trained, certified and compassionate, we can play an important part in ensuring Montreal’s nursing homes run well. That could mean anything from providing housekeeping support to supporting a senior’s mobility challenges. We’re very proud of this capability.
What kind of training do your caregivers undergo?
All of our caregivers are professionally certified. That’s a given. They attend special courses, and we also offer continuous training programs. With that baseline, you know you’re getting a certain quality of caregiver when you choose our team.
In the nursing home context, our caregivers use their skills and training to build relationships with the clients, learn the operational systems, and become highly qualified extended members of the facility team. Our goal is to provide the same seamless caregiving and service delivery in the nursing home setting as we do when working with individual clients, who live independently in their own house.
We read a lot about the talent crunch in the news these days. There just doesn’t seem to be enough people to go around. How have you coped with that at Home Care Assistance Montreal?
We’ve always been very deliberate and intentional about recruiting and retaining great talent. That means we have built up a huge network of caregivers over the last number of years. Our broad base of certified caregiver talent was a huge differentiator for us during the pandemic. Because our network is big, carefully selected and always growing, we were able to evolve our services to ensure continued, consistent care for all our clients. That’s true for the way we staff nursing homes, too.
Because we offer flexibility and contractual work, caregivers that work with us have a lot of say in building the kind of shift and schedule that works for them. This is one more way we retain top talent in a tight market. It allows us to continue basing our caregiving on the perfect match between caregiver and client, every time.
Last but not least, what do you like the most about your work?
I love that the work we do makes an impact. It adds up to a big difference. I am behind the scenes, organizing caregivers, liaising with care managers and families, recruiting talent. We invest a lot of time and thought into everything that happens on the back end, so that our caregivers can focus on delivering positive outcomes for our clients on the front end. That’s huge. Whether we’re talking about a client in a nursing home or one living independently on their own, I get to witness our caregivers in action. They ensure every client we work with has the very best quality of life. That makes me excited to come to work in the morning.