Home Care Aide (HCA) Job Description
Home Care Aide (HCA) - Job Description
Position: Home Care Aide
Reports to: Administrator
Supervised by: Administrator
Revised: 06/30/2022
Definition
Provides unskilled personal care and household services for stable, maintenance clients in their homes in compliance with a service plan.
Level of Responsibility
Reports to Administrator
Duties and Responsibilities
1. Completed agency training or have verified experience in the provision of home care tasks to consumers and passed a competency evaluation.
2. Observation and maintenance of the home environment that ensures the safety and security of the consumer.
3. Assistance with household chores including cooking and meal preparation, cleaning, and laundry.
4. Assistance in completing activities such as shopping, and appointments outside the home.
5. Companionship including, but not limited to, social interaction, conversation, emotional reassurance, encouragement of reading, writing and activities that stimulate the mind.
6. Assistance with activities of daily living, personal care and any other assignments as included in the service plan.
7. Completion of appropriate service notes regarding service provision each visit. Docu-mentation shall contain services provided, date, time in and out, and confirmation that care was provided. Such confirmation shall be according to agency policy.
8. In order to delineate the types of services that can be provided by a personal
care worker, evidence of training in and competency in understanding and identifying situations where skilled home health care would be needed to meet higher needs of the consumer.
(1) Skin care. A home care aide may perform general skin care assistance. A Home care aide may perform skin care only when skin is unbroken, and when any chronic skin problems are not active. The skin care provided by a home care aide shall be preventative rather than therapeutic in nature and may include the application of non-medicated lotions and solutions, or of lotions and solutions not requiring a physician’s prescription. Skilled skin care includes wound care other than basic first aid, dressing changes, application of prescription medications, skilled observation and reporting. Skilled skin care should be provided by an agency licensed to provide home health services.
(2) Ambulation. A home care aide may generally assist consumers with ambula-tion who have the ability to balance and bear weight. If the consumer has been determined by a health professional to be independent with an assistive device, a personal services worker may be assigned to assist with ambulation.
(3) Bathing. A home care aide may assist consumers with bathing. When a con-sumer has skilled skin care needs or skilled dressings that will need attention be-fore, during or after bathing, the consumer should be in the care of an agency li-censed to provide home health services.
(4) Dressing. A home care aide may assist a consumer with dressing. This may include assistance with ordinary clothing and application of support stockings of the type that can be purchased without a physician’s prescription. A home care aide shall not assist with application of an ace bandage and anti-embolic or pres-sure stockings that can be purchased only with a physician’s prescription.
(5) Exercise. A home care aide may assist a consumer with exercise. However, this does not include assistance with a plan of exercise prescribed by a licensed health care professional. A worker may remind the consumer to perform ordered exercise program. Assistance with exercise that can be performed by a home care aide is limited to the encouragement of normal bodily movement, as tolerat-ed, on the part of the consumer and encouragement with a prescribed exercise program. A home care aide shall not perform passive range of motion.
(6) Feeding. Assistance with feeding may generally be performed by a personal service worker. Home care aides can assist consumers with feeding