Tracking Time - Tracking Events - 2025 04 14

 

Mom had six children, five lived within caregiving range for her home-based care. Daughter 2 (me) took on the role of Primary Caregiver. The number of hours covered by the family did not change significantly month to month (24/7, 168 hours per week, 744 hours per month for a 31 day month). The chart above shows the difference between Dec 2023 and Jan 2024 for distribution of caregiving hours across the family team. As you can see, Son 2 took on extra caregiving time, which had a direct impact on Daughter 2 time on duty.

Compiling cost accounting records includes compiling time-based events. Cost accounting needs to include the time cost, and the social / relational cost. What part of a caregiving day is used to manage the social dynamics of changing interactions throughout a given day - Home Support personal care, external caregiving (paid privately), physiotherapy visits (paid privately), health provider interviews and diagnosis (including implementing action plans), family social calls, family respite carers.

Daily events become too numerous and small to count. For example, in July, 2022, Mom needed medications given five times a day. The only person authorized to administer medications was the primary caregiver (ie. Home Support respite was not authorized to give medications, external caregivers paid by family were allowed to give meds).

On Mondays, in July, 2022, I was still trying to work full time and look after Mom. We hired an external caregiver to provide two - five hour shifts per week. This was all we could afford. 

In the month of March, 2022, our external service provider worked 35 hours, this amount of time cost us $1,286.25 in fees. Estimated per hour cost to our household as 36.75, or 183.75 per day for a 5 hour respite window for me to go and get paid work done at my auxiliary desk upstairs. I ended up with at least two different desks set up in the house so I could get work done in Mom's suite while she napped, or at night once she had gone to bed, or upstairs, where I could work uninterrupted while someone looked after Mom in her suite during the day.

When Mom and I came down with Covid in November, 2022, our external caregiver could not provide service. At that point I realized I had to change our strategy because the cost of managing for external caregiving support and the relative value to me to maintain paid work to keep our household afloat did not realize enough earned value to warrant the extra cost and work of managing schedules, administration, and training / quality assurance. The cost of procuring external caregiving support was causing a net draw down on our budget cashflow month to month.

Service Dates Invoice Period	Invoice Total
Mar 10 2022 - Mar 17 2022	$ 551.25
Mar 21 2022 - Apr 1 2022	$ 735.00
Apr 4 2022 - Apr 19 2022	$ 1,102.50
Apr 21 2022 - Apr 28 2022	$ 735.00
May 2 2022 - May 11 2022	$ 1,102.50
May 16 2022 - May 25 2022	$ 1,102.50
May 20 2022 - June 8 2022	$ 1,102.50
June 13 2022 - June 22 2022	$ 1,102.50
June 27 2022 - July 6 2022	$ 1,102.50
July 11 2022 - July 20 2022	$ 992.25
July 25 2022 - Aug 4 2022	$ 1,102.50
Aug 8 2022 - Aug 18 2022	$ 1,102.50
Aug 23 2022 - Sept 1 2022	$ 1,102.50
Sept 5 2022 - Sept 15 2022	$ 1,102.50
Sept 19 2022 - Sept 28 2022	$ 1,102.50
Oct 3 2022 - Oct 12 2022	$ 1,102.50
Oct 17 2022 - Oct 26 2022	$ 1,102.50
Nov 2 2022 - Nov 10 2022	$ 735.00
Nov 16 2022 + Nov 23 2022	$ 367.50

2022 Year End Total

$ 18,448.50

Completed inputting time records for 2022 - January records are incomplete - started keeping the Google Calendar entries in February. Currently there are 888 schedule events (there is one empty event for the days of January). For the months of February through December (11 months) there were 857 schedule items. This averages to 78 schedule events per month, more than two per day. This does not count the daily Home Support caregiving visits, which took place 6 out of 7 days a week. So, adding at least 24 schedule events per month - bringing the total number of schedule events per month to 102 events per month, at least 3 per day - of transitions for schedule management.