Elderly people frequently need a lot of help, and the people that help them as caregivers also need a break. These are some jobs and maybe business ideas for people to fill some of these gaps.
I find that a lot of my contemporary middle-age people in the US are part of the sandwich generation where they have children that they are raising and parents that are needing assistance. Some people live locally and many live across the country. These are some ideas for services that may help during these times.
1. Care advocates
People that will manage the process and stay on task on your behalf. This would be a good service to offer relief to local caregivers, or offered to be an advocate for people who may want to care for a relative, but live too far away. This person may need to have legal status to act, or at least inquire about somebody's health.
I would imagine a business that would do. This would market to adult children that live out of the area. You could have standardized reports and a schedule of checking on living arrangements, whether they were in their own home or in an assisted living facility, the status of bills, and someone you could then create a web portal so that the family member who might live out of state could check in on the status of their family member that needed assistance.
2. Personal assistant to the elderly
This would be similar to companies that will come over for four hours at a time, but slightly different. This would be a person that would take care of the household and make sure the bills were getting paid. It may also include some lighthouse work, but that would be handled by a different type of job role. 3. Specialized diet food shopper
Make sure that people on salt restricted diets have the correct food in stock. This can be a creative position as well. Many people that need to go onto salt restricted diets later in life or develop diabetes need to change their habits and may not know how to eat good food that doesn't have salt in it or added sugars.4. Personal chef
This could be a business where you would need to be a fairly sophisticated chef to make good food that still respected dietary restrictions.5. Assisted living advocate
This would be somebody that could visit an assisted living facility on behalf of caregivers and check in with the elderly person. They would make sure that they have toothpaste or whatever they would need. They would also interact with the nursing facility to see if there was any action that needed to be taken. 6. Hospital advocate
This would be a person that could be on site at a hospital and manage communication with doctors and make sure the patients need are being met. In the United States, this person would need special healthcare permission to be able to do this. They could make summary reports.7. Caregiver assistant: business oriented
This would be somebody that could be a partner for caregiver. They would manage bill payment, would need to understand Medicare in the United States, could potentially advise on wills and trusts. This person would be useful in a situation where you may have somebody that is able to be a physical caregiver, but because of lack of time or resources or knowledge, they might not be able to manage the financial affairs of an elderly person.8. Caregiver assistant: action oriented
This would be a compliment to the business oriented caregiver. This would be a scenario where an adult child caring for an elderly relative might be highly skilled at business, or may live physically out of state, but be able to handle bill payments, They need somebody with boots on the ground. This person would be able to perform a variety of tasks, such as shopping or light house work. There is an industry in United States that handles this level of care assistance. 9. Assisted living facility placement service
This would be a group that would locate special needs facilities and keep tabs on local care facilities. Frequently, when you are shopping for places like this the brochures all look the same. You frequently need to get your family member into a facility on very short notice. This placement service could work on commission but also perform a watchdog function for the assisted living facilities.
We went to a a number of facilities where the marketing department showed us wonderful things, and then the reality was far different. A placement service would help to research the real experience of people that live in these places and try to find a good match for the person needing assistance.
10. Fun creator
A number of elderly people lose ability to do things that they once enjoyed. Whether this is the ability to play golf, do needlepoint, or even read and watch TV. This role would help people enjoy their lives beyond their limitations. This may mean creating fun games that you could play with a balloon or mentally stimulating games that you could play with limited vision or physical games that you could play from a walker or wheelchair. There is a lot of opportunity for this as so many people wind up not having fun in their old years.
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