Frequently Asked Questions

Millions of people in the U.S. are providing largely unseen care to loved ones while also working full time jobs. The vast majority of these family caregivers are thrust into stressful situations with little experience or support, and they spend hours upon hours googling and researching to determine how to navigate their situation. They struggle to find quality time for their families, put off pursuing careers or growth opportunities, and often neglect consistent self-care.

Cariloop founders, Michael Walsh and Steven Theesfeld experienced these challenges first-hand earlier in life. That’s why they created Cariloop. Because no one should have to go through caregiving alone. Learn our story.

Today, with record low unemployment and high talent mobility, companies often struggle to maintain staff. At the same time, a largely unseen population within the workforce, is struggling to balance the demands of both caregiving and work. This costs employers talent, productivity and more. Cariloop provides an innovative and inclusive solution that helps you support and retain valuable employees and more including: 

• Reducing a root cause of stress and burnout
• Increasing retention and improving recruitment
• Improving productivity and reducing missed workdays
• Delivering on DEI initiatives

Explore the comprehensive benefits of Cariloop’s solution for employers.

Employees in need of support can get connected with one of our incredibly passionate, experienced Care Coaches by visiting their employer’s customized Cariloop landing page. Once employees fill out the short intake form, they are immediately paired with a Care Coach whose experience matches the employee’s caregiving needs.

Once employees have created a case, they can:

• Invite other family members or stakeholders to participate in the case as a part of the “Care Team” (such as the family’s financial advisor, legal counselor, care manager, etc.).
• Securely upload files or documents for easy accessibility whenever needed by the Care Team.
• Collaborate with the Care Team and Cariloop Care Coach throughout the entire caregiving process.

Yes. Cariloop’s Care Coaching team is staffed with full-time bilingual Care Coaches. Employees can also toggle between English, Spanish and French as their preferred language at any point by navigating to the “Account” information section of their profile in the Care Portal.

As part of our offering for employers, we allow employees to create Cases for as many loved ones as they like. Simply put, there is no limit. We want to support employees with any caregiving need so they can stress less and be more present at work and at home. The employee can easily toggle between cases for their loved ones within the Care Portal and access the discussions and files associated with that case.

Yes. We understand caregivers and their families are often too busy during the day to stop and huddle up with their Care Coach. That’s why we’ve made it as easy as possible for our members and their Care Coaches to quickly exchange messages through our platform – no different than texting.

If the family needs to hop on a conference call or video chat with their Coach during the evening or weekend, our Coaches usually do their best to be able to accommodate if they have some advanced notice. Of course, we can’t always guarantee our Coaches’ availability after hours – they do also have families themselves! That said, we have amazing people that don’t ever want to see a family they’re working with go through this process alone, so we’ve seen many instances where they’re doing whatever they can to make themselves accessible.

As many as are needed to help coordinate care! We’ve seen our members include 8-10 other family caregivers at a time. Any time there is activity within a case, every individual who has been invited onto the Care Team will be notified and can actively collaborate with the other Care Team members and their Care Coach.

Our Care Coaches are required to have an applicable license or certification in good standing in fields like healthcare or education. Those licenses or certifications can include [but are not limited to] LBSW, PTA, OTA, SLPA, LNFA, LVN/LPN, LMSW, LCSW, RN, OT, PT, ST, SLP, CCM, CALM, or RCAL.

All of our Care Coaches are full-time, W2 employees of Cariloop. In designing our member experience, we learned early on that if we wanted to provide a high-quality, consistent level of interaction and maintain the quick response times we aim for, our Care Coaches need to be part of the team!

Our Care Coaches have been trained to respond to our members within 2 hours of reaching out through our platform. However, in many instances and as long as they’re able, the Coaches are able to respond in half or even a quarter of that time.

About a quarter of our members first come to us because they need help finding providers, such as clinical specialists, therapists, childcare, daycare options, skilled facilities, home health agencies, assisted living communities, in-home caregivers, or hospice agencies. As you can imagine, many of our members engage with us because they’re feeling overwhelmed as they attempt to navigate each stop along the care continuum.

Another quarter of our members first come to us because they’re trying to decipher a loved one’s financial and legal options as well as insurance policies to understand where it fits in the puzzle and what types of care will or will not be covered. These questions tend to center around Medicare, Medicaid, long-term care insurance, VA benefits, any supplemental policy, as well as assistance with finance and legal matters.

 The other half of our members are typically trying to navigate the everyday needs that caregivers face, such as family dynamic issues, the mental and emotional health of themselves and their loved one, medication management, transportation resources, support group availability, meal prep and delivery, or durable medical equipment purchases/returns.

No. We do not accept referral, lead generation, or subscription fees of any kind from any healthcare provider. We’ve made this a cornerstone of Cariloop’s core values in maintaining the highest level of objectivity and integrity in guiding our members through one of the most stressful processes they’ve ever been through.

Absolutely! When an employee leaves an organization where Cariloop is part of their benefits or wellness program, a 30-day countdown is triggered within our platform that allows the member to shift to an individual membership that they can cover the cost of on their own.

While the vast majority of our work is done on a per employee per month basis, we also offer our services in blocks of cases.

Typically our minimum size group is 100 employees, but we can configure our program to accommodate groups as small as 50 or 75 as well.

Yes. Prior to implementation, our Customer Success team will work with your IT, HRIS, and/or Benefits Administration teams to quickly set up any eligibility file transfers and integrations within your organization’s infrastructure.

We realize this is typically a barrier that can cause significant delays in rolling out a new program. We’ve taken careful consideration in designing these integration experiences for our customers so they feel as little pain and frustration with this process as possible.

Yes. As part of the implementation process, we meet with the HR and Health/Wellness leaders within an organization to identify the various other benefit and leave programs that are available.

We do this for two reasons – 1. So our Care Coaches are aware of other services available to the member and can direct them as needed and 2. So our team can work with HR to create process workflows around FMLA administration and have Cariloop be activated when employees are approved for leave.

We believe offering leave to an employee who is caring for a family member is an amazing thing, but what we don’t want is for that employee to spend their precious time on leave spinning their wheels figuring out how to do it all. That’s where Cariloop can be a real asset to that employee and his or her family both during AND after his or her absence.

Yes, we work alongside our customers’ and prospects’ consulting partners on a daily basis. If you are a Broker or Consultant and are looking for some more information on our program, please explore our partner’s page.