What does "will sit with the elderly" entail? What do they charge?

Just as babysitting doesn’t imply that the carer will be sitting, I’m sure that elder sitting is understood to mean that there will be caretaking duties. Exactly what they entail would be discussed in an interview.

I paid a woman to sit with my mom for $10.00 an hour.
She made sure mom took her pills, she fixed her breakfast, helped her to the bathroom, fixed her lunch and really just visited with her and kept her company.
One of the ladies was an ex hairdresser and washed and styled moms hair for an extra 10.00.

@chyna that’s great ! So it means more than just sitting in a chair. Thank you.

No different than babysitting for a child. When you babysit for a child, you have to do and help with anything the child needs. Elderly, same thing. Cooking for them or making a sandwich or whatever, cup of tea, helping with bathroom if they need it.

Maybe the person has dementia and can’t be left alone.

I would think something more like showering help and stuff like that would be a higher salary than just what I described above.

It obviously includes reading to them if they want to be read to and of course chatting and simply being there so the person is not alone.

A friend of mine did this work, initially for an agency and later freelance.

Some families prefer to hire private duty people rather than put their elderly relative in a facility. And a lot of it really is companionship (along with some light housekeeping duties) and in the evenings, being there in case of emergency.

This was actually very similar to what she did for her own parents during their declining years.

When I did this for a living it included cooking, housekeeping, laundry, medication reminders, assistance with all activities of daily living including bathing and bathroom, driving to appointments, mobility assistance (including lifting clients out of beds and chairs when necessary.) It also includes companionship. You develop relationships with your patients, in many cases a caregiver can spend as much or more time with a person than their own family, depending on the situation. You get to know them, you learn their moods, what makes them happy, what they like to do. It’s certainly not just sitting in a chair. I, personally, worked almost entirely with hospice patients and I will tell you right now it’s was far from easy work. I made $10/h private duty and $7.50 when working with an agency.

In our experience, a person who is paid to sit with the elderly will be there to take her for a walk in her wheelchair, and to let the nurses in the care home know when she needed to visit the restroom or have her panty pad changed. They also helped her change her clothes, go to the game room, hand her the newspaper, or change the TV channel.