While screening caregivers is important, there is nothing that can take the place of meeting a caregiver personally. Visiting Angels enjoys the opportunity to have you and your family "Select Your Caregiver" from our capable staff. During this interview process, we look for 2 specific responses: 1. How well suited is this caregiver to meet the specific needs 2. How well the caregiver and care recipient's personalities work together. Once you feel comfortable with the caregiver, care can start at your pleasure. The Select Your Caregiver process helps to ensure that the caregiver you want, is the caregiver you choose!
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Caregivers who join the Visiting Angels team, must meet our minimum experience requirements. We then require that only independent verifiable sources are used as references. Visiting Angels does not believe in allowing caregivers to "practice" on you or your loved one. Your health and safety is far too important.
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All caregivers undergo extremely rigorous background checks. The following checks are mandatory for all caregivers:

• National Criminal Background Check
• State Level Background Check
• An address locator seeks out where the caregiver has lived for the past 7 years and then performs a county level background check for each of those counties.
• Social Security Number validation
• Sex Offender Registry checking
• Local multi-county criminal background checks
• Department of Motor Vehicle checks
• Credit Checks - randomly  

As you can see, we are extremely thorough, and incredibly cautious for help ensure your safety. We would expect nothing less if we were caring for our own family.
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We believe in taking all measures necessary to find the idea caregiver for you. Part of this process is evaluating a caregiver in different ways. One of the ways that we look at a person is by giving that person computerized test to determine what kind of an individual that caregiver is "under the hood". Our computerized testing is yet another component of our due diligence process and tests for the following:

• General Reasoning - Cognitive Abilities
• Conscientiousness
• Tough Mindedness - How agreeable of tough minded an individual is
• Conventional - How well this person should follow rules and structure
• Extroversion - Outgoing vs. Reserved Listener
• Stability - Sensitive and anxious vs. Calm and stress resistant
• How much of a team player this candidate is
• How frank and candid a person is
• Hostility Level
• Integrity Levels
• Propensity for substance abuse
• Propensity for sexual abuse
• Propensity for computer misuse
• Personality Profiling
• etc.

While we do not rely on computer based testing to screen our applicants, it allows us to have one more component to evaluate when making a hiring decision.
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Before any caregiver has the opportunity to work on our team, they must first undergo a mandatory drug screen. From that point forward, all caregivers are drug screened every 3 - 6 months without notice. This allows us to help ensure that all caregivers are not only screened at the point of hire (where it might be conceivable that there would be a drug screen), but also on an ongoing basis. While there is no law mandating such stringent actions, we believe that ongoing drug screening is what should be done.
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When a caregiver applies to work with Visiting Angels, we need to confirm that they can indeed perform the tasks they claim they can perform. We also need to confirm that those tasks can be performed at a level of proficiency. The only way to know what a caregiver can and cannot do, is to perform a hands on skills assessment.
   
We accompany our caregiver to our training room and ask that they perform functions required of an in-home caregiver. If training is needed to increase an employee's skill level, then remedial training is undertaken. If the caregiver is able to perform the required tasks, then we know that we can feel confident in that caregiver's functional skill set.
   
The bottom line, is that anyone can say anything, but who verifies? We do...
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If there is one thing that we have learned, it is that if you expect great things from your team, you must train them to meet that expectation. Hiring "experienced" caregivers should not replace initial and ongoing training. Everyone needs to "sharpen the saw" so to speak. New techniques and educational breakthroughs happen all of the time. We want our caregivers to be the best; and the only way to do that is to train for the best.
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When a caregiver is hired, there are several steps involved. Two traditional interviews are performed with the Scheduling Coordinator and the office Director. In these interviews, conventional, analytical and behavioral techniques are used to look for very specific key indicators of the "right type" of person that we are seeking as a caregiver. We cast a very tight safety net to seek out and accept only those caregivers that are the best at providing care.
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How do you know that your caregiver providing care when they are supposed to be? Visiting Angels has a phone clock in and out system. The caregivers are required to clock in and out from your home phone. We are aware of exactly when a caregiver arrives by that phone call. If the caregiver has not arrived within 10 minutes of a scheduled shift, all Visiting Angels administrative personnel are alerted by email, text message and paging so that proactive measures can be taken to ensure that a visit is not missed.
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Visiting Angels requires all caregivers to have positive responses from verifiable industry references. A individuals past experience is at times a good indicator of future performance. For this reason, we seek out only those caregivers with independently verifiable references.
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Not only does Visiting Angels put in place an incredibly strong filtering system when hiring caregivers; but when caregivers are providing care we schedule unannounced drop-in's called "Quality Assurance Visits". We want to speak with you to see how satisfied you are with the care that is being provided and if it appears as though the caregiver is performing at the pre-determined level in accordance with the Care Plan. We have found throughout the years that an unannounced visit is one of the best ways to determine how successfully care is being provided. If desired, the family can also be kept informed of the outcome of each visit. Your 100% satisfaction is our top priority.
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