The 12 Cs of In-Home Caregivers®
December 8, 2023
According to estimates from the National Alliance for Caregiving, during the past year, 65.7 million Americans (or 29 percent of the adult U.S. adult population involving 31 percent of all U.S. households) served as family caregivers for an ill or disabled relative. This is a daunting task and at some point, the situation may require the family member to hire a paid caregiver to help give care in the home. Hiring a caregiver can be very demanding and requires special skills to interview and successfully onboard and motivate the right person.
To help in interviewing, hiring, onboarding and evaluating the work performed by the caregiver, I have created a guideline called, The
12 Cs® of In-Home Caregivers®. This guideline is divided into four groups:
- Caregiver’s tasks (caregiving, companionship, cooking and cleaning)
- Caregiver’s personality traits (compassion, chemistry, compatibility and communication)
- Caregiver’s values proposition (commitment, continuous improvement and cost)
- Care receiver’s Home Culture
Hiring and onboarding: To ensure a good match in hiring and onboarding a home caregiver, the exact care required and the roles and responsibilities of the caregiver should be well defined and communicated. When each party’s expectations are not matched, strain, conflict or a termination can occur. To prevent this, the care receiver and the caregiver, during the hiring and onboarding process, should discuss and agree upon the tasks to be performed by using the
12 Cs® guideline.
Caregiver’s work assessment: Once the caregiver is onboarded, a periodic assessment should be made to ensure the tasks performed are satisfactory to the care receiver. The 12 Cs® guideline provides an assessment tool to evaluate the caregiver’s work performance by filling out an Excel worksheet. This worksheet can be accessed by using the QR code on the next page.
Figure 1. A hypothetical assessment of two caregivers who perform similar tasks. They are rated on a 1 to 10 scale. Higher numbers are better and lower numbers need improvement.
Figure 1
Once the assessment is done, both parties should discuss areas to improve to meet the care receiver’s current or changing care requirements. This will ensure that the care receiver’s expectations are met and the work continues seamlessly.
Data from Figure 1 is shown in a graph in Figure 2. The larger the area, the better the caregiver’s performance resulting in a delighted care receiver.
Caregiver #1 (blue) performs all the tasks at the most optimum level (large area)
Caregiver #2 (red) performs these tasks at the sub-optimal level (smaller areas)
Figure 2
Click here for The 12 Cs of In-Home-Caregivers® in a pdf file
Click here for The-12 Cs of In-Home Caregivers® Blank Spider Chart in a pdf file
Click here for The 12 Cs of In-Home Caregivers® Task and Work Assessment Worksheet in an editable Excel file
Click here for The 12 Cs of In-Home Caregivers® Work Evaluation Graph in an editable Excel file