THINK HOME CARE ISN’T THE RIGHT FIT? CHECK OUT THESE SERVICES

Some people may shy away from home care because they think the care needs are too small or too great to be suitable for home care. In fact, home care services can fit a wide variety of needs and help a senior to age more comfortably at home rather than face a move to an unfamiliar and possibly frightening setting. Here are a few ways home care can assist:

1. Household Chores: This includes housekeeping duties like vacuuming, doing dishes, laundry, changing beds, and dusting. If you or your loved one has difficulty performing these chores, ask a home-care agency, such as ours, about housekeeping services.

2. Places to Go and People to See: Living alone when you cannot drive or have easy access to public transportation can be incredibly isolating and lead to depression. An in-home caregiver can not only provide companionship, but can also provide mind-stimulating activities, from something as simple as shopping for groceries, to more complex activities like transportation to events, social gatherings, a local museum, and more. This is one of the most frequent reasons for retaining the services of an in-home care agency.

3. Personal Care: When assistance is needed with bathing, toileting, eating, dressing, grooming, walking, getting out of bed or a chair, or providing medication reminders, a specially trained in-home caregiver can help. These are deeply private activities for the most part and suddenly finding that you or your loved one now needs someone to assist them with these things is most often a difficult situation to overcome. Finding an in-home care agency that truly listens to your needs and does an in-home assessment of the situation is critical to finding a good match between agency, caregiver and the client. Without that in-home assessment, it’s very difficult for an agency to understand just what the new client needs and what caregivers would be best suited to provide that care.

4. Nighttime Care: For a person who is unable to get out of bed by themselves, go to the toilet without someone assisting them, or get undressed (or dressed) by themselves, or when dementia causes “sundowning”, sometimes associated with wandering around the house–or more worrisome, wandering away from the home at night–extra assistance throughout the night from an in-home caregiver can give a family caregiver a solid night’s rest. It can also relieve the worry and tension of family members knowing that their loved one is safe and being taken care of appropriately.

AAging Better In-Home Care can help answer all your questions about symptoms you may be observing in your loved one or you may be worried about having yourself. If you’ve been noticing any of the above situations developing, please give us a call or drop by our offices to discuss your concerns. You can contact us[TU1] for more information on what types of in-home services[TU2] might be right for your loved one. Call AAging Better at (208) 777-0308 in the Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls or Hayden areas; (208) 263-7889 in the Sandpoint, Bonners Ferry or Priest River areas; or (208) 784-1505 in the Kellogg, Wallace or Pinehurst areas.