Perks of Senior Home Care Jobs

by Sarah Clark
sarah.clark@careertrainingdirectory.com
Career Training Directory Columnist

As the baby boomer population nears retirement, there will be a greater demand for long term senior home care. Here’s the scoop on jobs that involve providing long term care to the elderly.

You don’t have to be an expert in gerontology or demography to know that there is going to be a huge demand for long term home care over the next couple of decades. Just look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics website (www.bls.gov) and you’ll see that many of the fastest-growing occupations in the years ahead are in the health care industry.

To provide long term home care to aging boomers, more home health care workers will be needed. In fact, the BLS estimates that the number of home health workers will increase by more than 50 percent from 2004 to 2014.

Job Duties in Senior Home Care

What do senior home care workers do? They provide assistance to those who are limited in their abilities to carry out basic tasks because of physical or psychological reasons. Most are quite old and, as such, need help moving from room to room or getting dressed. Some might need to be reminded to take their medication or to eat a nutritious meal.

Since the duties carried out by senior home care workers are more physical than intellectual, very little formal training is needed to perform them. According to the BLS, a high school diploma or perhaps some training at a community college is sufficient training for most senior home care worker jobs.

To provide long term senior care, it’s helpful to have a compassionate and patient disposition. Since much of the work is physical, it’s also important to be in good health (you might need to move patients or help them out of bed or into a shower, for example).

One of the advantages of senior home work is the working hours. If you are a stay at home mother, for example, you’ll find it easy to work part time as 25 percent of home care workers are employed half time.

Sources

Bureau of Labor Statistics

About the Author

Sarah Clark is a freelance writer who specializes in career development.