How To Pick The Right In Home Companion Care Expert in Broward |
Posted: September 17, 2021 |
Pick the Right Senior Care Experts Our goal with this post is to help answer these questions—and many others—that you will surely face as you guide your parents through the closing years of their lives:
Since then, options for senior care have proliferated wonderfully. That, of course, is great and welcome news. But having such a variety of choices presents challenges of its own. How do older adults and their children and others who love them decide among the available options? How do they identify the best alternative for their circumstances while keeping in mind the important considerations of health, emotions, geography, finances, and other variables? The task can seem overwhelming. But it doesn't need to be. To help you, we decided to write this book as a guide to what families need to know in order to make the best senior care decisions. And, although this book is directed at you and your family, including the senior members, we have also designed it to be useful to professional caregivers, medical professionals, senior care specialists, bank trust officers, elder care attorneys, physicians, and others who need to know more about the expanding universe of senior care. We've learned much about this new world of senior care and how to navigate through the care options. The business we founded fifteen years ago provided an important window into the experiences of thousands of families, each facing decisions much like yours. The cumulative lessons learned have informed our understanding of senior care and the need for this book. Our business, Home Instead Senior Care, is the world's largest network of local franchise offices that send caregivers into homes of seniors to provide nonmedical services, such as doing light housekeeping chores, preparing meals, and probably most important, offering the older adults companionship and moral support. These caregivers have experienced the challenges faced by hundreds of thousands of seniors worldwide, as well as the struggles that their families encounter when navigating decisions related to each stage of this care continuum. We work regularly with more than 100,000 outside professionals including social workers, hospital discharge planners, care facility managers, and geriatric care managers who offer a variety of services and care options for seniors. Our family, too, has faced decisions about how to care for its aging members. Paul's eighty-nine-year-old grandmother was rapidly declining from healthy senior status to frail and elderly. But in caring for her, we learned that with some simple changes in her routine, such as proper meals and a lot of attention from family and friends, she was able to live a wonderful, fulfilling, and happy life for twelve more years. We have seen firsthand the confusion that overwhelms families when they lack the knowledge and understanding of how to provide care to their loved ones—and the tragedy such confusion can lead to. We have witnessed the pain that families feel when they look back on missed opportunities. On the positive side, we have also seen the blessing of a well-informed and well-handled change of life in which information and communication abound. Clearly, we bring a viewpoint to the field of senior care and faith in our own program. We understand the importance of helping seniors stay for as long as possible in their own homes and in the company of family. But we also recognize that there are many cases in which seniors will be happier and healthier in alternative programs. Some, for example, will be more comfortable in the company of peers in an assisted living community. Seniors with serious disabling illnesses requiring extensive, around-the-dock medical attention may be far better off in high-quality nursing homes. We seek to present, fully and fairly, the options open to you and your family, including the advantages and drawbacks of each and the financial consequences. We recognize that one of your goals will be not only to take care of an aging member of your family but to hold your family together and preserve your own well-being by involving siblings and others in this undertaking. You can feel assured that by the conclusion of this book, you will have done your best to research your alternatives in order to navigate through a challenging, but potentially very rewarding, time of life. Our wish is that you will use this information to provide the best and most appropriate senior care for those you love and that, as a result, you and your family will have the satisfaction of knowing you did your best for those you love the most. The realization conies unexpectedly and suddenly; or it's a gradual awakening that can no longer be ignored. Yester-day you were your mother's daughter, or your father's daughter. as you have been all your life, through all of life's passages—but the passages were always yours. You were the one who was a disruptive three-year-old, compliant ten-year-old, rebellious adolescent, overconfident college student, a confused novice in the workplace, cocky associate director, nervous newlywed, and then a sometimes-overwhelmed parent of your own three-year-old. Through it all, your mother never changed. She was the rock, home base. Your tumultuous spinning from stage to stage may have exasperated her from time to time, but she rarely showed it. She was the fixed point in your small universe, the one you could always rely on to get you out of that impossible jam, that catastrophic situation, or so it seemed at the time. That Was Yesterday Today is very different. This morning you drove to your mother's house for a routine visit and found her sitting in her car in the driveway, making no effort to move the car or get out. When you asked her to roll down the window, she did, and she recognized you. But she had no idea where she was or where she was going. The episode confirms a truth you had been trying to hide from—your mother's growing detachment from the world around her. On your last several visits, her home has been in disarray, extraordinary neglect on the part of a woman who had been a diligent housekeeper to the point of obsession all your life. Or perhaps the realization that your parents are no longer your protectors but now your dependents come with your father's spinal injury. He was always Mr. Fix-h—electrician, carpenter, plumber, roofer all in one. Not only did he take care of your parents' home, but he was also the one you called when your furnace col-lapsed in midwinter, your own husband far less adept with tools. Now your father is likely to be semi-invalid for the rest of his life, confined to a wheelchair much of the time. Who Takes Responsibility? The world is now turned upside down. You have suddenly become your parents' parent. And you realize that the coming years are going to be extremely challenging. How do you talk to your parents about their changed lives and bring them in on the decision about what kind of care they need? How do you engage your siblings in sharing the responsibilities? Which sibling should be the health care proxy, and should he have absolute authority? Who should manage the finances and protect your parents' assets? How do you distinguish between a good assisted living center and a bad one before your parent is already in residence? How do you know which option of the senior care continuum best suits your parents' needs now? What information do you need to make the best decisions about care options? We will address these and many other important issues throughout this book to help you make wise and responsible senior care decisions. You are understandably devastated by the realization that your mother or father is failing. The fear had crossed your mind from time to time in recent years after they reached the age of seventy, but you pushed your concern aside in favor of more immediate worries, like college tuitions for your children. You are likely feeling guilty because you hadn't been more insistent that your parents buy long-term care insurance and create advanced directives. You are afraid that the decisions you make in the coming months are going to shorten your mother's life, or worse, make her final years miserable. You Are Not Alone Fortunately, that is not true. You are not alone. The enter-prise of caring for the elderly has grown prodigiously in the past few years. Which isn't surprising. The senior population in the United States is increasing at an astonishing rate. Some 38.7 million Americans are now sixty-five or older.' That population is expected to more than double in the first half of this century, from 35 million in 20002 to 88.5 million in 2050.3 The fastest-growing part of the U.S. population is the very old, that is, those over eighty-five. That group is projected to double from 4.6 million in 2002 to 9.6 million in 20304—and double again to 20.9 million in 2050.3 Moreover, it is not just the United States that is experiencing this huge growth in its elderly population. Aging is truly a global phenomenon. The population of the United Kingdom over eighty years old has increased by more than 1.1 million between 1981 and 2007.6 People seventy-five and older now constitute 10 percent of the population &Japan.' In 2007, people sixty-five and older made up 13 percent of Australia's population; by 2056 those over sixty-five are expected to constitute 23 percent or more of the population! In many developing countries, especially those of Asia and Latin America, the elderly population is expected to grow by as much as 300 percent by 2025?
Among the many others who can be called upon to help the elderly are 7,600 geriatricians (physicians specializing in the care of seniors)" and about 4,400 elder law attorneys. Hundreds of churches and synagogues across the country now sponsor adult care centers and other programs to help the elderly. So, you are not alone. Indeed, you have entered a heavily populated and complex new world that is changing rapidly. Professionals ranging from research scientists in their laboratories to hands-on caregivers at the bedside learn more and more about the care of the elderly and how to apply those lessons. What you must do is learn how to find your way through the maze of services that are available and how to determine which are best for you and your parent. And you need to be armed with information to avoid the misunderstandings, deceptions, conflicts of interest, and misleading information that develop in any industry—the senior care industry sadly being no exception. Throughout history, families, both immediate and extended, have borne the primary responsibility for taking care of their elderly, just as they do today. Eldercare institutions and organizations beyond the home appear to have been rare before modern times. Still, a few advanced societies through the ages may have recognized a community responsibility for the elderly. One of those |
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