Care for someone's mother
the way her daughter abroad needs.

It is five in the morning in a flat in Surulere, and the carer is awake before the client. She checks the room, notes the night in the log, and waits for the old man to stir. When he does, she helps him sit up, washes his hands and face, and reminds him that his blood pressure tablet is due. She does not fetch the tablet. She does not count it. She writes the time in the record and tells the nurse. Later she makes his breakfast soft, because he has trouble swallowing, and sits with him while he eats. At ten the daughter calls from Houston. The carer does not give a diagnosis. She says what she saw, what he ate, how he slept, and that the nurse will call back. That is the whole job, and it is harder than it sounds. I am your instructor on this track, and over ten weeks I will show you the work as it is done inside Marula Home Care, a fictional West African agency with a nurse supervisor, a supervising doctor, eight carers and ten clients. Six of those clients have families in Houston, London, Toronto, Dublin, Atlanta and Manchester. You will meet the daughter who asks for one more tablet, the fall at five in the morning, the confusion that is an infection, the nephew who leaves with the ATM card, and the death at home. This course is for two people: the operator of a home care agency in West Africa whose clients are families abroad, and the person already living in the US, UK or Canada with the right to work whose first job there is home care. Training and certification do not guarantee employment. Now the numbers, and I will name every source as I go, because you should not take a figure from me without knowing where it came from. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its Occupational Outlook Handbook, puts the median pay for home health and personal care aides at thirty five thousand eight hundred dollars a year. The same handbook projects employment in this occupation to grow by eighteen percent over the decade, much faster than average, and it expects about seven hundred and sixty thousand five hundred openings a year on average, with most of those openings coming from workers leaving the occupation rather than from new growth. That is the American picture, and it is the one most quoted. Here in West Africa, a market check of published agency rates and market guides puts a live-in caregiver placed through an agency at between one hundred and nineteen thousand and one hundred and fifty nine thousand cedis a month. A registered nurse is placed at between two hundred and nineteen thousand and two hundred and fifty nine thousand cedis. Where a caregiver and a nurse are placed together, the published range is three hundred and twenty nine thousand to three hundred and fifty nine thousand cedis. Those prices vary, and they are checked each time the course runs. I will say this plainly: training and certification do not guarantee employment. What they do is prepare you for the work and for the interview. The demand is real, but it is not a promise. So what is this job, actually? Strip away the titles and the job is four things done in a loop. You support daily living: washing, dressing, eating, moving, sitting with someone through a long afternoon. You observe: what the skin looks like, what was eaten, how the walk has changed since last week. You record: the time, the words, the fact, in the daily log, so the next person is not guessing. And you remind and report: the tablet is due, the nurse is told, the family abroad gets the weekly update. That is the whole of it. Now the line, and I want you to hear it exactly. The carer never gives medication, never measures it, never decides it. The carer never makes a clinical decision, never changes the doctor's plan, never shares the client's information, and never promises a family an outcome. When the daughter in Houston asks for one more tablet, the answer is not yes and not no. The answer is that you will write it down and the nurse will call. That is not weakness. That is the role working as designed, and it is what keeps the client safe and keeps you employable. In the Marula simulator you will practise holding that line while a worried family pushes, because that moment is the job, not an interruption to it. This course is built for two people, and I want to be honest about who they are, because it is not for everyone. The first is the operator of a home care agency in West Africa whose clients are families abroad. You already place carers in homes. You want the intake done properly, the care plan written, the rota covered, the weekly update sent, and the family in London or Toronto to trust you with their mother. The second is the person already living in the United States, the United Kingdom or Canada with the right to work there, whose first job in that country is home care. You need the daily log, the handover, the deterioration reported in the right words, and the boundary held when a family pushes. If you are in either of those two positions, this is for you. Now who it is not for. It is not for anyone hoping this certificate opens a visa, a sponsorship or a relocation. The course sits entirely outside any immigration process. The UK stopped sponsoring new overseas care workers, Canada's home care immigration pilots are paused, the United States has no route for this work, and online training does not count toward Canada's immigration training requirements. If you do not already have the right to work where you live, this is not your door. It is also not for someone who wants to give medication, make clinical decisions or promise a family an outcome. The carer supports, observes, records, reminds and reports. That is the line, and it does not move. Training and certification do not guarantee employment. Now the shape of the ten weeks, because you should know what you are committing to before you enrol. Weeks one to eight are lessons and quizzes. Each week has a theme, and each theme ends with a quiz you must pass before the next week op