Companion lady: offer your services in exchange for accommodation

Offer your services as a Lady or Gentleman companion. The sense of contact, generosity, and listening skills have neither age nor gender and do not require any specific diploma.

What to expect from this service?

Your role will essentially be to enjoy exchanging and sharing moments with an elderly person and/or someone with reduced autonomy. For the Solidarity Cohabitants themselves retirees who offer this service, it will be easy to find a topic of conversation. For the younger ones, more patience will be required. Time does not pass the same way at 20 as it does at 80. Offer to play board games, read, or even accompany them on their shopping trips. In short! Any activity that gives them the opportunity to feel useful and less alone.

If you are hosted, being a lady or gentleman companion will also require being attentive at night. Indeed, while during the day medical staff come to provide the necessary care to the elderly and/or dependent person, it is often at night that families and your host need reassurance.

Your Host or their family may also ask you to handle some simple administrative tasks (mail, filing, etc.).

The qualities required to be a good candidate for the role of lady or gentleman companion

You are called upon to provide a friendly presence. You must therefore be altruistic and able to show empathy because conviviality and sharing are essential in this type of exchange.

However, do not forget that you are neither their nurse nor their caregiver. Your role is not to replace these health professionals. Just engage in friendly exchanges with your Host and provide the moral or even emotional support necessary for their quality of life.

For your relationship to go well, we always invite you to enter into a contract between you and your Host. This is to legally define your relationship and ensure that the housing in exchange for service arrangement is clear.

If you have had this experience, tell us about it