We have used Your Choice Senior Care to provide caregivers for my 96 year old mother for over 6 months. Overall Your Choice is an outstanding company which I highly recommend for anyone needing help taking care of a loved one. One caveat which I have to stress: Ultimately the family/loved ones are responsible for ensuring a specific caregiver is appropriate for the person needing care. Contracting with any company which provides caregivers is committing to an a relationship which can last months or even years. Observation and communication is key to making that relationship work. Your Choice does a good job finding people to act as caregivers, but the management has no way of knowing what happens when a caregiver is in the home other than what they are told by the people there. Even the best caregivers need direction and supervision by those contracting with Your Choice for their services. In particular, if the person receiving care has special needs, spell those needs out and ask specifically for caregivers which meet those needs. This is hard to do, especially when you are already overwhelmed with caring for someone, but is essential for finding the right caregivers. The individual caregivers we’ve had from Your Choice varied from excellent to poor. Almost all of them behaved professionally, but a few did not. None of the caregivers were ever physically or emotionally abusive toward my mom. Most showed real care and concern for her well-being, but a few were indifferent. I cannot sing the praises of the best caregivers highly enough. They are awesome and we are grateful for all they did for mom, often going well beyond the job description to help make her life better and our life easier and less stressful. Quite a few caregivers were mediocre; doing what was required or requested, but no more. They were trustworthy, but forgettable. The best caregivers felt like friends and family, whereas the mediocre ones felt like employees. Some were a bad fit for our situation. For example, we have a dog that often stays with mom while we are at work, and some of the caregivers were terrified of dogs. In some cases mom simply didn’t like the caregiver, not because of professional reasons but simply a clash of personalities. When we first contracted with Your Choice we did not specify we only wanted caregivers who didn’t smoke and some of the initial caregivers did smoke. They didn’t smoke inside the house, but would go outside. However, the lingering cigarette smell on their clothes sometimes followed them back inside, which my wife and I found irritating. In each case, we informed Your Choice of additional requirements (only caregivers who aren’t scared of dogs, who get along better with mom, who don’t smoke) and the management immediately changed the schedule to accommodate our requests. No questions asked. A rare few caregivers committed fire-able acts, such as falling asleep while they were with mom, or using her computer to plan their vacation. We informed the management; they immediately apologized for the caregivers behavior, agreed it was unacceptable, and those caregivers never came back. Again I have to stress: the family/loved ones contracting with Your Choice have to pay attention to the what the caregivers are doing and inform the management when there is a problem. The owners/managers of your choice are consistently excellent. When we have had problems with particular caregivers the management has dealt with our concerns immediately and professionally. They have been very responsive to our and my mother’s needs, often providing caregivers on very short notice. The owner, George, has often come to stay with my mom on those rare instances when an scheduled caregiver was delayed, or needed to be replaced, or needed to leave before the next caregiver was scheduled replace them. George has been fantastic through all the ups and downs. He works tirelessly–almost around the clock–to provide care for everyone who needs it. I trust him, I like him, and I am very glad I hired him to help us. Your Choice made it possible for us to keep mom in our home when the strain of caring became too great for my wife and me to continue doing so alone. Contracting with them was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Richard D.