Elderly care, your opinion/help

I'd very much appreciate anyone who can help me and my group

Elderly care, your opinion/help
Help with things that take good vision would be nice - mending, sorting medications, driving or otherwise escorting someone to shops, religious services, medical appointments, social events, etc.

Having someone go with an elderly person to a medical appointment actually could involve much more than merely transportation: it's always good to have someone along to assist in sorting out what to tell the doctor, and organizing what the doctor has said - this can be hard enough for anybody of any age.

On a more sophisticated level, help with paying bills and other basic financial work requiring reasonably good vision and a steady enough hand to write clearly is a possibility for your service.

Reading aloud with ability to discuss what's been read is something that many people might miss if their eyesight prevents reading from books. Recordings don't provide the opportunity for discussion, obviously.

Use your imagination - what would you like help with if you suffered from low vision, arthritis, shaky hands?

I'd pay to have somebody come over and find my remote.

Re: Elderly care, your opinion/help


Thank you so much for your advice. I will send all that you send to my team members. But we still have trouble thinking of what we should charge for this service.... There isnt really anything for us to compare to. What's your opinion?

Are you in the US or Scotland?

In Scotland

You could act as a referral service for home handymen and cleaning women--also gardening services.

You could offer help with Christmas Shopping--possibly both as an escort and a wheelchair pusher.

well for the moment we already have the plan set out, all we need to do now is make adjustments by asking people what else they would like but most importantly how much they would be willing to pay for this service.

First, determine your costs. Then work on how much your customers are willing to pay.

Indeed you are right which is where we started, but our lecturer stated that we must find out what people are willing to pay first, before we look into that. Sounds mad I know. All of the costs you mentioned are being done by another group member but I am told that he cannot do anything until I decide how much people are willing to charge as an estimate. Our lecturer is very difficult but to save hassle we do as he suggests

Elderly care, your opinion/help
You have a number of things to consider:

First, what economic level would make use of your services; and second, what income will be needed to keep your services a viable business?

Both of these factors depend heavily on the location where your services will be offered. You don't want to charge so little that the business is not sustainable, nor do you want to charge so much that you will not have enough clients. Bear in mind that much of what you have in mind is one-on-one service, which means that your providers will only be able to handle one assignment at a time, so if you charge 15 pounds for clearing snow from a driveway and clean say six driveways in one day, you haven't taken in very much money.

Will this be run from your home, where you have limited office expenses and a certain amount of tax benefit? You can probably charge less if that's the case.

If you are thinking of driving people you should find out the cost of transportation in the area; if it is expensive you may be able to offer your services for less. On the other hand, you have to consider that at least some of what you offer will require insurance - if you plan to escort seniors to the doctor, say, or drive elderly women downtown for shopping.

Choose the area you plan to serve and ask in places like the local Chamber of Commerce for suggestions on whether there are similar services already available; check on the prices quoted by other providers; see what local cab drivers charge, and find out whether they are good at helping people carry parcels into the house. If you choose an area with no such services, you can be more flexible, since clients will have no choice. If you choose an area with a large teenage population you will find competition in doing such things as gardening and snow removal.

Unfortunately, we can only give you guidelines, not specific suggestions for amounts to charge; that will vary enormously depending on where you are.

Noddy has a good point - you could be a kind of contractor, connecting clients with providers, rather than doing the providing yourselves.

Hey there, thank you again for your advice. I did as you suggested and contacted the Chamber of Commerce for Edinburgh, as that is the area we are focusing in. I have tried to contact other places which are similar to our own but have had no reply, and sadly, time is the key here. Our business plan has been split into different sections, what I am having to cover is "Product/service" which looks into of course what we will provide, how much, who would be interested and whether it will be successful or not etc. I will be meeting with my group tomorrow and I will tell them what you have suggested to me, but I would certainly like to hear more from you as you clearly know this field very well Thank you again

Elderly care, your opinion/
I am familiar with the small inconveniences that accompany the state of being elderly, and the need for easy access to people willing to attend to the chores that become increasingly difficult with advancing years. So all my suggestions have been basically just common sense, written down pretty much as if talking aloud.

From what I've seen in our area this kind of work is often undertaken on a private basis by housewives or retirees looking for occupation more than money although services are charged for.

Can you be more persistent with these "other places similar to our own?" so as to get a feel for how many clients such a service can handle, and how much staff it can support?

I'd really like to hear how your project gets on.

Well I will need to speak more with my group about that. I think the idea is that the 5 of us run it for a start. We work more as agents. So at first it would be a small basis.

That sounds very sensible.

Thank you for your help Im off to bed now but as I said, I am meeting with my group tomorrow so I hope to learn more from them. And i will let you know how everything is going