How can families of someone with a spinal cord injury evaluate potential caregivers? - Kathy Hulse, MSW

You want to spend as much time as you can with interviewing, doing a background check, remember they’re going to be in your home. They can steal from you, and I don’t mean to badmouth caregivers, but then again the personal nature of what they’re going to be doing—they’re going to be in their homes and if you have children in your home there are all kinds of things you need to remember that they can be vulnerable to. They’re going to be doing very intimate things to your loved one, so you have to be careful about that. Do they have the ability to learn?—even if they don’t have any experience with spinal cord injury, that’s okay. Do they seem like they could learn? If they are green and don’t know a darn thing about spinal cord injury, but you think, “Gosh, in my gut, I think they may be able to learn something,” then go with your gut, see if you could teach them that and give that a chance. Sometimes those turn out to be the best caregivers in the world.