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Companion calls are caring and calling combined.
Your heart breaks every time you find a new care call service for your elderly family member.
Indeed a free or low cost regular companion call for my dad would help out a lot. For my dad, reducing elderly isolation and the increased risks of depression, abuse, and health issues isolation contributes to. For my family, reduce part of the burden of our near-24/7 caregiving responsibilities.
Sounds like a good deal for my family’s circumstances, good for the person who’s receiving several hours of care each day, and good for the people providing in-person care.
A good companion call would probably tend to my dad’s needs, get my dad in a good mood, and come into the call with topics prepared and ready-to-go. (The caregiver is somewhere else doing whatever they like while all this is happening!)
Your heart breaks when you find out the call care program is not available in your area, costs too much for your budget, or provides crappy service despite your needs.
Let’s find a new approach, to finding care calls for your elderly family member. Mine is 70+ with PD and PDD, if you can relate…
Care calls take place through phone, text, apps, email. They can be by a real person or an automated robot.
You can see these are a range of more specified services which take place through phone or communication apps.
Some for medication and healthcare appointments. Some for general conversion and socialization. Some let family members record and send voice messages.
By now I’ve learned most things related to caregiving have a viscous mess of terminology to make navigating the healthcare system that much more of a headache.
Companion Matters. This is the compassionate, engaged, respectful service which understands the emotional aspects of the caregiving dynamic as pertains to loneliness and overall mental health.
Callgivers. Like a caregiver over the phone, CallGivers checks in on old people to know they are safe and make sure they’re overall life is going well
CareCheckers. The care calls come from a real person who asks about meds as well as friendly conversation.
UDS Services. Looks like a non-profit offering conversation calls to discuss anything the elderly person likes, such as hobbies, family stuff, and how they’ve been feeling lately.
Elder Helpers. They recruit care call volunteers who contact the elderly and seniors.
Snug Safety. Based on checking in with an elderly person living alone. It looks modern and has an app.
CareCallingNow. This automated check-in service works with normal phones, and doesn’t include conversation-style companionship care.
SageMinder. / OurBrightLink. / iamfine. / Assuratel. All look like more automated services that only check-in and report to family members if there is a problem, nothing to help emotional feelings surrounding isolation.
It’s 2023 with TikToks and Takis. There are tech-advanced care call options available, like Alexa Together #ad is for connecting seniors with family and friend, and like Medical Guardian is a software-hardware solution for families worried about elderly care emergencies.
From what I’ve seen, several top-rated care call services have old websites looking like the 2000s. They use regular phone lines, not an internet connection or app or IoT device (internet of things). They have real people call you, not a text message, automated recording, or AI buddy.
From the 1990s to today, it looks like the call care industry hasn’t changed much. It works like this:
You pay money to the care call company, usually a recurring credit card bill.
You scheduled the days and times, usually on a weekly or daily basis. You choose a time for the call, the number of call attempts, and how much time to delay between call attempts.
You define the purpose of each call, is it a medication reminder, to check the seniors safety, just to say hi, or all of the above?
Most service just call by phone and you need to pick up the phone. That won’t work for my dad, since his Parkinson’s and dementia are too advanced.
Is there a different solution? One where my dad wouldn’t need to answer a telephone call by picking up the phone and tapping a button?
It’d be extra work for the caregiver to answer the phone and setup the call. For the caregiver who wants LESS stuff to do, I’m skeptical how helpful “me needing to pick up the phone every day at a certain time” would be...
Since my dad is teetering towards needing someone on hand 24/7, we need something that can regularly reduce my family’s caregiving responsibilities.
We want a routine call schedule, so that we don’t have to make a new plan every week. It’ll grow into our overarching routine if my dad gets a care call at the same time, same day(s), each week.
We want a call operator who engages my father in some meaningful way. It’s better if the same person calls my father over time. A single dedicated care caller will be able to get to know my dad on an individual level, and be able to adapt and personalize the care to my dad’s needs as the weeks go by.
How could a phone call help the elderly overcome loneliness? Even in a family scenario where aging has taken its toll, a phone call to check in on your health, wellness, and emotions might not be so bad.
Receiving calls from a caring companion, to the person in your home who doesn’t get out of the house much. It corrodes mental health, being alone most of the time. You feel disconnected and forgotten.
Loneliness is a big deal, and a growing mental health issue in aging populations. When you get older, it’s not easy to stay engaged with your community, friends, neighbors, and family members.
Aging people face greater risk of falls, and that risk is oodles higher for people like my dad with PD (physical aspects) and PDD (cognitive aspects).
I’m not ready to tell you which is best. I’m still shopping for my daddio.
I want to know what’ available in brass tax comparables (like pricing, technology, frequency of session, duration of session), and what’s more important in practical terms (is the service worth it, is the care person nice/professional, does my mom get the respite she seeks, and is the service easy enough for my dad to use).
Kevin is a family caregiver to his wife Jean. Eventually residential care housing and he went for 2 years… and then The care manager went into lockdown.. … And Rachel and Alzheimer’s org would call as a companion… I’m not sure if they’re calling for the caregiver. That’s a separate avenue, I’m NOT specifically looking for today. Nor do I live in the UK.
I’d say companion calls are a type of companion care. The purpose of companion CARE emphasizes socializing and connecting on a human level. The purpose of companion CALLS is to socialize over the phone. Companion calls are a subset of companion care.
That’s not to say companion calls don’t fall into other categories too. I’d say due to the “calling in from remote location” nature, companion calls are also a subset of TeleHealth/TeleCare technology.
Care calls describe a service where someone (a person or a robot) calls an elderly person to check in on them in some capacity.
Call screening describes a service which blocks spam calls to protect seniors’ identity, financial, and privacy.
These are two very different services. It’s tough to keep up with the rising ElderTech wave.
