If you’ve gone through the process of searching for care for your aging loved one, you know how difficult it is. What are Mom’s needs? Where will Dad be happiest? What can we afford? Making it even more difficult are the intense feelings of sadness, guilt, fear, and even anger that can accompany the search.
Because this search is so daunting, we often put it off for as long as we possibly can. We start having that nagging concern that Dad needs help, but then we come up with a million reasons to put it off—he’s not as bad as we thought, we need to put the house on the market first, let’s just get past his birthday, I want to wait until spring, and so on and so on.
You don’t know how many people tell us, “We’re going to need to get some help in the next year,” but they don’t actually start looking into it until they’re desperate—their mom falls or their dad has a stroke or their husband wanders away from home.
Deciding where your loved one will live and what type of care they’ll have is not a decision you want to make under a tight deadline.
Once you start researching, the choices for care may seem overwhelming. There are independent living apartments, assisted-living communities, adult day care centers, long-term care facilities (i.e., nursing homes), home care providers, and probably a dozen other variations of each. All types of care have limitations, so it’s important you know what they can and cannot do for your loved one.
It’s also important that you be realistic about your loved ones’ needs not just today but next month and next year. Especially if you’re going to go through the physical and emotional work of selling your dad’s home and moving him elsewhere, be sure his new home can actually meet his needs both now and in the future.
We work with many clients whose loved ones live in independent-living or assisted-living communities, but they still require our home care services to remain in the community and safe in their homes. Quite often, these communities offer additional assistance themselves, but you need to be very clear what the charges are for those services. When you’re touring the facility, be sure to ask what care isn’t provided as part of the basic costs and what care costs more. Also ask about the basic requirements for safety and independence to remain in the community. Is it expected that your loved one walk to meals themselves? What if they need help with showering, dressing, or medication administration in the future? How are those services billed?
Long-term care facilities can obviously provide more care for your loved one than assisted- or independent-living communities, but all facilities are not created equal. Don’t assume the look of the building on the outside and in the lobby is indicative of the care that’s provided (it might be but it’s not always). Ask about the ratio of nurses to patients—i.e., how much one-on-one attention will your loved one get and how long will she wait to receive services.
Sometimes, it’s not an all-or-nothing decision. We’ve seen clients piece together a number of types of care—either using home care services to keep a loved one from having to move from her assisted-living community or using a combination of home care and adult day care centers to keep their loved one home at a lower cost.
If you’re one of those people thinking you may need help in the coming year, the biggest advice we can give you is start your research now. No matter how hopeless or sad a situation may seem, there really are a lot of great options—you just want to give yourself and your loved one enough time to explore them all.
Also published in The Swampscott Reporter
Molly Rowe owns FirstLight Home Care with her husband, Steve, and lives in Swampscott with their two sons. FirstLight provides non-medical in-home care to adults in Swampscott, Marblehead, Lynn, Salem, Peabody, Danvers, Beverly, and Lynnfield. For more information and help caring for your loved ones in the comfort of their own homes, please visit FirstLight’s website at www.salem.firstlighthomecare.com or contact Molly at 781-691-5755/[email protected]
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