NEW YORK: When Laura Hirsch of Keller Texas had to find a rehabilitation center to help her father recover from a difficult surgery in September, the caregiving service Cariloop saved her a whole day.
In addition to Cariloop, companies such as Wellthy and Torchlight provide caregiving coordination and support. Others offer short-term backup care for both children and adults, including Care.com's Care@Work program. "People are able to spend the final days of a parent's life with them, and they wouldn't have been able to do that otherwise," said Melanie Moriarty, a senior director in human resources at Best Buy."We hear so many heartwarming stories."At News Corp., backup childcare is provided by Bright Horizons, which also includes an eldercare component.
A service like Wellthy will step in and help a family coordinate caregiving. While an employee can call up with something as simple as finding an allergist, the biggest impact is dealing with complex care situations like dementia, said Wellthy founder and CEO Lindsay Jurist-Rosner. Case managers can steer clients toward services in the public domain for special needs children, for example, and deal with insurance coverage, said Adam Golderg, Torchlight's founder and CEO. One financial services company estimated it saved about US$400,000 in cost offsets, Goldberg added.