Basics:
ElderCare.com is a marketplace where people needing elder care can find caregivers to provide medical care and help with ADLs
Expected pay: You set it
Husl$core: $$$
Commissions & fees: 0 – $12 a month
Where: Nationwide
Requirements: 18 or older; legally allowed to work in your jurisdiction; pass a background check
ElderCare.com Review:
ElderCare.com is one of a number of sites offered by a Toronto-based company called CareGuide. They operate sites for housekeepers; pet sitters; house sitters and nannies, including NannyLane.
How it works
If you want to sign up to provide care, you’ll need to register, providing basic personal information. This includes your name, location, education and phone number. You’ll also list how much you want to make per hour. Interestingly, this site will not allow you to plug in an hourly rate that’s lower than minimum wage in your state.
This may be because CareGuide offers payroll services to domestic employers that assume these workers are household employees. That’s a good thing for workers because it ensures that you would be paid for all hours you work and get overtime, if you work more than a set number of hours per week.
Completing your profile
You’ll also be encouraged to post a photograph and a description of what you can do. In other words, can you administer medication? Provide help with activities of daily living, such as dressing and bathing? Or are you only able to provide companion care, light housekeeping and errands?
The last step in the sign up process will encourage you to buy a membership.
Basic vs. paid membership
Paid memberships are $12 a month or $101 annually. However, you can also choose a free basic membership.
The basic membership restricts the number of messages you can send and receive. However, it does not eliminate messaging completely, so it might allow you to at least respond to job queries. But there can be no more than three messages per contact, so that prevents much of a back-and-forth about the job.
Should you pay for the premium membership? Probably not.
Job opportunities listed on the site are sparse. And our experience with this site, and its sister sites such as NannyLane and Housesitter.com, indicate that dormant profiles remain posted indefinitely. So even the few listings you see may not be active.
Recommendations
We don’t see enough activity on this site to recommend paying for a membership. But there’s no downside to posting a profile under the free plan.
However, we think you’ll have more success finding elder care opportunities at Care.com and, possibly, Carelinx.
What their users say (from Indeed):
Editor’s Note: There are 93 reviews of “Eldercare” on Indeed, and mostly positive. But many of them are referring to a company that’s no longer in business and some of them are referring to the process of providing elder care in general — not to working with Eldercare.com. We believe these handful of reviews actually refer to working through this site.
Enjoyed meeting the clients. Felt like it was a very worthwhile job. It is a job where you really get to know the people you work for and become almost like family
Really great people to work for. The hours were suitable for workers with children. The clients were manly shut ins or terminal patients. There have been times when i was asked to work longer shifts than expected.
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