Can You Still Have a Career and Be a Caregiver?

Lots of caregivers feel torn between being the caregiver that their senior needs and wants and having a career. It might be possible for you to do both, but you need to be realistic and doing it alone isn’t a great idea.

Home Care Services in Riverhead NY: Balancing A Career and Being A Caregiver

Assess What Your Senior Needs

For some caregivers, caregiving is a little more hands off. You might check in with your elderly family member over the phone or handle specific smaller tasks for her. If your senior needs much more help, that is a little more complicated, of course. Get an idea now what your elderly family member needs and what your caregiving responsibilities entail. Try to look ahead a bit, too, and picture how your responsibilities may start to change.

Look at Your Schedule Realistically

The more realistic you are about your current schedule, the better. One easy way to do this is to take a blank piece of paper and mock up a weekly calendar. Block out all the times you’re working, sleeping, or otherwise committed to a task. If you have specific blocks of time already devoted to caregiving, make sure you include those in your schedule mockup. From here, you can get an idea what you can realistically do in terms of the time that you have available.

Figure out What Options You Have

Once you know what’s going on with your schedule, you’re able to really verify what options you have available. For instance, your senior may only need occasional help that other family members might be able to provide. As her primary caregiver, you can organize and facilitate that schedule while others are able to be there to actually help your senior.

Ask for Help from a Variety of Sources

Not everyone has the same access to friends and family members, however. And it’s also entirely possible that your elderly family member needs even more help than just once in a while. This is when it makes sense to start looking into hiring elder care providers who can tackle the heavy duty tasks your senior needs handled while you’re at work. They can free up your mind to focus on your career during working hours.

Caregiving is only one part of your life. The rest of your life is made up of social engagements, your career, and caring for yourself. The rest of your life doesn’t slow down or stop just because you’re helping someone that you love.

Being a caregiver doesn’t mean that you suddenly don’t have a career any longer. Balancing caregiving and work is work in itself.

If you or an aging loved one is considering Home Care Services in Riverhead, NY, call the caring staff at Artful Home Care today at 631-685-5001.