Home Care Assistance is Changing the Way the World Ages. This is the latest installment of our “How To” series, where we lay out smart and easy-to-understand advice on navigating the aging process.
What are their challenges? What do they love? How can we make the biggest impact on a daily basis? We use that insight as the basis for an individualized home care plan that’s as unique as our clients themselves.
This month, we culled through our plans, network and daily experiences in caregiving to pull together the five biggest impacts the right care can make for your loved one. If you’re thinking about embracing professional caregiving for a senior in your family, keep these five key benefits in mind:
- Safety is everything. Time and time again, clients share the relief they feel knowing their loved one is safe and secure in their own home. With the right home care plan in place, families don’t have to worry about a stove being left on, or a long-running shower forgotten in the bathroom. These challenges can pop up as our loved ones age. Knowing a caregiver is there to keep an eye on things when family cannot creates a new and necessary sense of security.
- Routine makes an impact. There’s an element of control for seniors who have agency over what they’re doing, and when. Building a consistent routine through regularly scheduled home care visits and tasks can generate a sense of comfort for clients. It’s also helpful for families who are balancing work, children and other personal commitments to know a professional caregiver is helping to maintain that routine—especially on days when their own schedule veers off course.
- Happiness counts for a lot. Seniors who want to enjoy life in their own home can sometimes struggle to find fulfillment alone. Knowing that a personal caregiver will be baking in time for a round of cards or a visit to the public gardens can go a long way to cultivating joy in daily life. That resonates for the families we work with, who love knowing the senior in their life is enjoying meaningful interactions with others, all while living at home.
- Practical needs are important. Any caregiver who cohabitates with their loved one knows what it means to navigate a question here, and a need there, over the course of the day. Juggling that level of care while managing other personal commitments can be difficult. Layering in the complexities of a senior who is living with dementia, Alzheimer’s disease or other health condition can make meeting those demands downright overwhelming. The respite that a professional caregiver provides—whether on hand for an hour, part of the day or full-time—reassures families that their loved one’s needs are being met as part of a broader team.
- Loving relationships last a lifetime. It’s not easy to slip back and forth from caregiver to son or daughter. Bridging generations to ‘lead’ a senior’s routine, manage appointments, and handle the ins and outs of aging can make it challenging to preserve the special relationships you’ve cultivated over the years. Bringing an outside caregiver into the mix can alleviate some of that strain, teeing families up to enjoy the little things together, without the added dynamic of becoming a parent’s ‘parent’.
Closing thoughts
It takes a village to age well. Ensuring loved ones—and the families who care for them—strike the right balance can be challenging. Collaborating with the right team of home care professionals can eliminate some of the complexities, while creating more time to simply be together.