Sharing Caregiving Responsibilities with Siblings

Dividing responsibilities amongst more than one caregiver can help everyone to feel involved in the home care process and also helps to ensure that your loved one’s needs are met. Tackling this task systematically can help make sure that you don’t inadvertently skip anything important.

4 Tips for Sharing Caregiving Responsibilities with Siblings

1. Determine the Primary Caregiver

Sometimes it’s obvious who the primary caregiver will be. Maybe it’s the sibling who lives closest to your elderly loved one or it’s the one who has the closest relationship with the loved one. Other times, all of you may live in separate areas and one person may need to step up and take over the primary caregiving duties. Regardless, having someone taking the lead helps to eliminate some confusion.

2. List What Needs to Be Done

Every elderly loved one has different needs, so it’s important to get an idea what types of responsibilities and tasks are necessary for your elderly loved one. For example, your loved one may need help with transportation or with errands. You can either have different siblings helping with different task categories or you may need to break it down even further into individual tasks. Either way, start with a list of what needs to be done so you can get a full picture.

3. Match Tasks with Siblings

Once you know what your loved one needs, it’s easier to match up tasks with the people who can commit to completing them. Don’t worry if every task doesn’t have an assigned person just yet because that can be worked out once you’ve gone through the list. Try to match up tasks with siblings according to skill sets and the time that person has available to devote to the tasks for the best results.

4. Get Extra Help to Fill in the Gaps

Even with the best planning, there are going to be gaps in your list of tasks. You can try to patch those gaps amongst your siblings, but you can also try bringing in extra help. One option is to ask other family members for help. You can also hire home care providers to fill in, especially if you’re all caregiving from a long distance.

Keep in mind that even the most thorough plans will need to be adjusted as you go. Situations and needs change periodically, so schedule regular meetings with each other to reconfigure as necessary.

Becoming a family caregiver can be unsettling when it happens suddenly, but especially when you have siblings who want to help out, too. It’s important to work out who handles which responsibilities from the start.

Contact Sonas for Home Care Services in Florida

If you or an aging loved one are considering home care services in Florida, contact the caring staff at Sonas Home Health Care. Call today (888) 592-5855.

Jillian Miller BSN, RN

Director of Nursing at Sonas Home Health Care

This blog was reviewed by Jillian Miller BSN, RN — Director of Nursing for Sonas Home Health Care’s Tampa Bay market — for clinical accuracy. Jillian Miller has been a nurse for 16 years — working primarily in pediatrics. She believes the best part of working with the pediatric population is when you see smiles from clients when you first enter the room. She loves seeing the difference you can make in families’ lives while providing the best care possible for them.