My cousin is currently in rehab and looking at hiring a live-in home health aide. Her other alternative is to seek admission to a nursing home. She is in a wheelchair and needs assistance with bathing, food prep, and just daily life. I am wary of hiring live-in help. I live 100 miles from her and cannot be her live-in caregiver myself, and there is no other family. Does anyone have experience with hiring live-in 24/7 caregivers? What pitfalls should she be aware of? Her finances are limited.
For a Live in caregiver you still need to pay a living wage, you need to have a back up because 1 person can not work 24/7/365.
Add to that you must pay legally taxes, have workmen's comp, make sure your home is insured properly in case of injury.
"Room and Board" is not payment for caregiving.
If necessary begin the application process for Medicaid ASAP.
Your cousin should talk to the Social Worker at the rehab facility.
The aid needs to earn some actual cash in order to live properly. There are also numerous posts from live-in aids who also regret the arrangement.
If she has limited resources she can maybe consider going into a good facility that accepts Medicaid on private pay initially and then going through the application process (she needs to qualify both medically as needing LTC and financially).
Please find those posts and have her read them -- they are eye opening.
Also, hoping your cousin has assigned a PoA and has all her other legal ducks in a row. Never be tempted to pay for her care, even if she asks. The monthly cost can be in the thousands, and sometimes in the tens of thousands.
If not, she really should find a nursing home and apply for Medicaid.
I am sorry for your family, my sister died of breast cancer and it truly took a village of friends and family to have her at home on hospice. One person would have never been able to handle it.
As far as you paying, solid no, she has public resources available.
If she needs help in managing this it's a good sign that she's not capable of being home at this time.
I would tell her you can't/won't handle this for her.
Rehab is the perfect place to go into care from with the help of their discharge planning. It will be much more difficult if she returns home in need of this level of care and is alone and helpless.
This gets a big "NO!" from me, or a more gentle "I am so sorry; I couldn't possible help with that; I don't feel anything like competent to do that".
Speak to discharge planning TODAY by phone to tell them you can't assist. And caution them against an unsafe and unwise discharge home from their facility.