Matia Bryson

Finding Personal Care Homes in Georgia

Especially when a family member is NOT elderly, this task can be a daunting challenge. For your information, a personal care home is a place like a group home or assisted living, where typical residents must be mobile and not need nursing care.

Without giving away too much personal information, I can say I have some experience in this area. Actually it feels more like I have experience on how NOT to find a personal care home. Error Number One is looking on the internet… there is a dearth of information, so I expect this post to have a top listing in the search engines for this topic very quickly.

Okay, let me give you the only two links that are remotely relevant, just to get them out of the way:

http://socialworkersteam.com/Documents/HowtoGetaGreatPersonalCareHome.doc

http://socialworkersteam.com/Lincensed_pch.aspx

Take the information in the first link with a healthy dose of skepticism, especially the parts about how much Betty Hardy of Altrus Inc will do for you. The second link is a very brief and inaccurate listing… there are so many more places that Betty can give you eventually. It may feel like yanking teeth to get them. (Hint: don’t trust the mail, and be sure to have a home fax machine.)

Now here are a few tips for you:

First, assume nothing. Do not assume that people who are supposed to call you will call you. Do not assume they even have your contact information when someone else said they will pass it along.

Second, learn all you can from everyone you meet in the process. I know this is hard when you do not even know the right questions to ask.

Third, when you finally locate some personal care homes, visit them. Do not expect communication to be particularly easy because most managers and owners speak English as a second language.

I am still working on finding a SOURCE-funded personal care home for my family member. It has been two months that I have been working on it. My summer has been accentuated with a marathon session in the emergency room, multiple hospitalizations for said family member, 911 calls, encounters with police and paramedics in three jurisdictions, unreturned phone calls to doctors’ offices, Medicaid nonpayment on essential medications, and the medications plain not working. Oh, and would you believe it is totally on-topic to note that my home water consumption increased by 3000 gallons last month? (No, we did not have an accident or a leak, and we did not fill a swimming pool.)

This post may not seem to particularly fit this blog topic, but with my thoughts preoccupied with my general survival, I thought “Liberty Endeavors” is not entirely an inappropriate place to post this information, and I hope it may be useful to someone else coping with similar difficulties. Please feel free to comment.