The Lehigh County area Agency on Aging is piloting a new program to better serve its seniors.
The goal is to help senior citizens get high quality in-home care.
Lehigh County is one of the first in the Commonwealth to test out a new program to grade in-home care providers for its senior citizens.
Those aids help older adults with day to day, but vulnerable tasks like bathing or getting dressed.
“For 20 years I was a home health aide, and you have to go into the homes and it’s hard because they don’t know you, you don’t know them,” says Sharon Coulter, Resident, Cedar View Apartments.
The web-based system, known as C-SCREEN generates a rating for each in-home care provider based on things like background checks, employment history, and drug screening practices.
Seniors or their families who want in-home care will meet with Office of Aging case workers, who will use C-SCREEN to help them pick a provider.
“When they get to the place of starting services, there’s a scoring system and so when they choose who they want to come in, we give them each the providers scoring and talk to them about like what they’ve gone through so that they feel really comfortable with who’s coming into their home to help them,” says JR Reed, Executive Director, Lehigh County Office of Aging and Adult Services.
The goal: to ensure Lehigh County seniors, have the safest, and highest quality care.
“This program makes sure that they screen them more thoroughly and makes sure that we’re checking all the things to make sure the right people are going into people’s homes,” says Reed.