What is a crisis clean?

Essentially, a Crisis Clean is usually a one-off cleaning of a home that is not safe or healthy for the person living there to return to; where an individual would be at risk due to the conditions they are living in.

When is a crisis clean cecessary?

Crisis Cleaning is required when regular homemaking and cleaning services, emergency services, health networks or even victim services, encounter a situation that they are not prepared or equipped to handle. HALO does a lot of crisis cleaning.

Who calls us?

HALO gets calls about Crisis Cleaning from many different community partners. Perhaps there is a 9-1-1 call for a person having a health crisis and when emergency services arrive, they encounter a hoarded home – HALO will be called. Perhaps a community homemaker shows up to clean an elderly client’s home and finds it beyond their capacity to make safe – HALO will be called. Perhaps a person is scheduled to return home from a hospital stay to a home not in liveable condition – HALO will be called. These are just a few examples of situations that would be considered a Crisis Clean.

Where do most of our crisis cleaning calls come from?

One of HALO’s top referral sources for Crisis Cleans is Community Care Services. You may or may not be aware of home and community care services in your area that are specifically designed to help patients and seniors who need support living at home or who, with this support, can stay in their homes. Here in Ontario, we have qualifying criteria that, if met, the government pays for this home care.

These Home and Community Care services provide home care. They go in and out of client homes and take care of services like vacuuming, dusting and mopping, laundry and ironing, grocery shopping and errands, meal preparation, medication reminders, etc. On occasion, these homemakers and community helpers arrive at a client’s home and find the home in bad shape. This is where HALO comes in.

Arranging a crisis clean

HALO will work with case managers, community service workers, family and client’s themselves to schedule a time to get access to the home for a Crisis Clean. As you might imagine, the turn-around time for these kinds of jobs is quite fast.

The cost of crisis cleaning

The nature of a Crisis Clean means that it usually takes a lot of HALO’s time and resources. Thankfully, these great community service agencies, hospitals, emergency services and other referral services almost always have crisis clean budgets to cover the cost of this service for our clients. HALO is incredibly grateful for this because, historically, we have come to know that many clients who require Crisis Cleaning services are not in the financial situation to be able to afford it.

What happens during a crisis clean?

HALO will work with our referral source, ahead of the clean, to agree on what needs to get done. We always expect to do some kind of deep cleaning of kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms and other living areas of the home. Crisis Cleans almost always also include removal of garbage, unwanted or broken items and other items creating clutter and making the environment unsafe.

The benefits of crisis cleaning

By now, we hope that the benefits of Crisis Cleaning services are apparent. However, what we haven’t explicitly mentioned is the connection that a safe and clean living environment has on both physical and mental health. By offering these services, HALO is not only making the living space safe and healthy to live in but is also contributing to the health and well-being of our clients who live within those spaces.