How to Provide Services for the Handicapped and Elderly

The best way to learn about community or social services is from someone who provides it. Amy Judd, director of community/provider relations, Center for Hospice Care (CHC), describes her work as being dependent on "loyal, dedicated, and trained...volunteers." She says that last year, her volunteers worked the equivalent of almost 11 full-time employees, driving throughout their eight-county service area covering a distance "now approaching halfway between the earth and the moon." She adds, "We estimate CHC volunteers saved the agency just over a half million dollars in expenses." There is an obvious devotion that service providers hold for their work with their elderly and handicapped clientele, and volunteers are invaluable in this process.

Things You'll Need

• Car
• Driver's license

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Instructions

• 1

  Spouses often become the caregiver.

  Volunteer at the neighborhood senior apartment complex or for a larger service, such as REAL Services or hospice. Examples of volunteer work includes delivering meals on wheels, or being an unpaid caregiver providing in-home relief or respite care.

• 2

  Take employment with a home-care business in your area, such as Comfort keepers or Home Instead. If there is none, start your own franchise. There is always a need for non-medical services like shopping, cooking, cleaning and personal care, like bathing and feeding the clients.

• 3

  Contact the local churches in your area. The larger the congregation the odds are greater for the need of service providers for the handicapped or the elderly. It may be as simple as driving the church van, picking the clients up from their homes and delivering them to the church or for some form of respite.

• 4

  Reduce the chance of physical harm to the handicapped or elderly. While shopping, help them. Reaching and removing something from the high shelf or lifting a heavy item into the shopping cart, can be a tremendous service.