Elderly In Home Care and Caregiver Stress

Elderly in home care can cause caregiver stress.Caregivers are expected to be strong and healthy, but what happens if the caregiver gets sick? As the Marketing Officer of a web based business that assists families to find care for their loved ones, I can always tell when a caregiver who is calling is at a breaking point. Their voices are very stressed amd they are almost in a panic. Often, as they describe their situation, I can hear the tears welling up inside of them. unfortunately, some people wait too long and the stress of being a caregiver has already taken its toll, but it does not have to be that way.
If you are the primary caregiver of a person with Alzheimer's,dementia,or other serious illness, you need to be very careful not to let the situation overwhelm you. While this sounds easier said than done, there are steps you can take to prevent burnout. Here are a few points that can help.
1.Look for help.Allow others to help and don't feel that you have to be the one to do everything. There are numerous ways to get help for your loved one depending on your needs,location and financial situation. Here are a few:
a.Contact the Office on Aging and ask about respite programs. Most counties have programs that will pay for a limited number of hours of home care services, free of charge. These types of programs are designed to give you a break and allow you to get out of the house. 
b.If your loved one qualifies for Medicaid, there may be programs available which would pay for either home care or adult day care services.
c.If your loved one has a serious illness, consider using hospice. You don't have to wait until the illness is at the ends stages to get help.
d.Ask relative or close friends to help you out.
2.Get some exercise.Exercse can help you reduce stress, keep your body strong, strengthen your immune system and simply make you feel good. Some of the best exercises are walking or biking. These are easy to do, get your heart rate into the aerobic zone, burn calories and give you a chance to clear your head. Some excellent mind/body exercises include yoga, tai chi and Qi gong. Make time to exercise and you will reap the rewards.
3.Eat well.Like exercise, eating a well balanced diet helps you feel good, helps avoid being sick and gives you the energy you need to be a caregiver.
4.Learn relaxation techniques.Deep breathing, meditation and some of the mind/body exercises mentioned above can be tremendously helpful. An easy breathing technique is to inhale through your nose for a count of four,filling your belly with air, not your chest.Hold your breath for a count of seven and then exhale through your mouth for a count of eight.This can really help calm the nerves when practiced regularly.
5.Get an adequate amount of sleep.The fastest way to get run down is never getting enough sleep. If you find you are caring for your loved one at night, try to hire a person for overnight if this is possible. If you have siblings, ask them to chip in financially if they are not able to share some of the actual hands-on care.
While it can be very difficult to do many of the suggestions listed above, you must understant that if you get run down and sick, the problem is greatly magnified. You must be firm in demanding time to care for yourself and most importantly, you must not feel guilty. You are doing a great and honorable thing by being a caregiver, but it must not completely take over your life.
If you don't know where to turn, consider hiring a professional geriatric care manager. While they can be a bit costly, it is often money well spent, as their years of experience are focused on helping seniors and their families when in nee

Senior Care Homes-Care and Housing Options in NJ

Many times, adult children of seniors find themselves playing the role of advocate to obtain care of parent. This may begin when a parent becomes ill or injured and has to be hospitalized or you may see that your parent is declining and can no longer be alone and will require ongoing care. What do you do then? So many people, it's like a "trial by fire", trying to learn the language of senior care homes options in order to make the best decision for their loved one. Understanding the different senior care terms can make this an easier task.  

Rehabilitation/Sub acute Care Center-this type of facility provides short term therapeutic care for patients once discharged from the acute care of a hospital. The therapy provided includes physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy. A typical stay in a rehab center is usually about two to three weeks. The goal is to restore the patient to normal capacity.

Home Care-also known as senior in home care or home health care. This type of service provides a range of services that include assistance with bathing, toileting, dressing, and ambulation. Home care can also include meal preparation, light housekeeping and laundry services. In-home care can be provided for a few hours per day or on a 24 hour per day basis depending on need.

Adult Day Care/Medical Day Care-a protective environment for seniors needing a structured program. Services for adult day care vary from custodial care, offering stimulating activities for independent seniors along with meals, to an adult medical day care which provides activities to seniors with medical needs.  Seniors are usually brought to an adult day care program in the morning and leave in the evening. Transportation to and from the center is often available.

Assisted Living-is a combination of housing and personal health support services for seniors. Services in an assisted living usually include:
-private or semi-private apartment
-emergency call systems
-daily meals served in a common dining room
-social and recreational activities
-transportation
-assistance with personal care
-medication management
-24 hour staff
-laundry and housekeeping services
In addition, many assisted living facilities have a secure unit for memory impaired seniors.

Nursing-Convalescent Home/Skilled Nursing Facility-For those with a need for more acute care, a nursing home provides patients with 24 hour care. This type of facility is generally for patients requiring ongoing skilled care such as bathing, toileting, dressing, as well as assistance with ambulation. Medical supervision and rehabilitation services are also provided.  

Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC)-a community that offers multiple levels of assistance to seniors. Levels of care range from independent living, assisted living and nursing home care. A CCRC provides a continuum of housing and health care options on one central campus.  Seniors who opt to live at a CCRC usually sign a long term contract (often the length of a resident's life). This offers the senior the peace of mind that they can receive housing and assistance at one site, as their needs increase.

Affordable Homecare Resources

According to the Census Burea, the United States population of 65 and older will more than double by 2050, rising from 39 million today to 89 million. An association of retired persons' study shows that 84% of Americans want to stay at home as long as possible. But now more than ever, today's economy necessitates creativity when seeking affordable home care. 
A good first step for many, especially those seniors that don't have family nearby for assistance, is to seek the advise of a case manager. A case manager is a professional whose role is to act as an advocate and help seniors and their families coordinate care needed.
Your local Office on Aging is a valuable resource. Each county operates its own office and is operated through state funding and offers information and programs to individuals over the age of 60. Information is available on a variety of programs and services for seniors, many at no cost. Some counties have grants that are awarded to qualifying seniors to pay for home care services.
Check with your local hospice agencies. Most people associate hospice with end of life care only. Hospice agencies now offer their services to chronically ill patients as well, thereby lengthening the amount of time services can be rendered. Additionally, hospice services can be utilized in conjunction with other agencies in order to have as much care as possible for the least out of pocket expense. Hospice also offers a volunteer as part of their services that can assist at no charge.
Speak with your local religious based organizations (church or synagogue). Many churches and religious organizations offer assistance to their senior members at low or no cost.
Go online to a website called Benefits Check Up. This is an online screening tool that helps seniors locate federal, state and local benefits programs for which they may be eligible.
Comparative shop your local home care agencies. Talk with local agencies to find the best priced/valued services. Look for any agency that doesn't require a long term commitment.
Consider live-in caregiver instead of having several different shifts throughout the day. This is usually a more economical form of home care and it reduces the number of people coming in and out of your home.

Using Home Care for a Loved One - 15 Good Reasons

hat is widely viewed as the best and most viable delivery of health care in America? Infirmed and elderly individuals have been found to prefer home care by 90 percent over comparable institutional care.

What are some of the reasons for home care? This article counts the ways:

1. Home care is delivered, as you would expect, at home. Dorothy said it best: “There’s no place like home.” Certainly, this is a statement that most people would wholeheartedly agree with. There is nothing like the comfort and familiarity of being cared for in the comfort and familiarity of one’s own home.

2. Home care helps keep families together. Compare this to taking an elderly person away from their loved ones. At no time is family more important than during times of illness.

3. Home care helps seniors maintain their independence. Home care allows seniors to continue to live in the place they function best – their home.

4. Home care prevents or puts off institutional life. Living in a long-term care facility is unfamiliar and can often be intimidating. Most people prefer postponing the inevitable as long as possible.

5. Home care helps promote healing. Medical evidence shows that people recover more quickly at home.

6. Home care is safer. There is no secret that people pick up infections and other complications when they live amid a chronically ill population (such as in a hospital or long-term care facility). This is obviously not the case when cared for at home.

7. Home care means personalized care. Care becomes a one-to-one proposition in the home. You get this nowhere else.

8. Home care often gets the entire family involved in providing care. Immediate and extended family members often take an active role at different times of the day.

9. Home care reduces the stress that often accompanies illness. Illness increases anxiety and stress, but it’s not nearly as great when care is practiced in the home.

10. Home care is the most effective form of health care delivered in terms of customer satisfaction. It all comes back to the fact that people prefer to be at home.

11. Home care is delivered by a special group of people. People don’t work in the home care industry for the money. They do it for the emotional satisfaction of helping others and for making a difference in the life of another.

12. Home care extends life. Studies by nursing schools and government agencies have found that home care extends life. Visits by home care personnel often provide spiritual as well as medical support.

13. Home care improves one’s quality of life. For most people, the quality of their life is far better at home than anywhere else.

14. Home care is less expensive than other forms of care. The cost of home care is always less expensive than hospitalization and almost always more affordable than nursing home or assisted living care.

15. Technology will make home care even more desirable in the future. Medical and technological advances will soon make it possible to diagnose, monitor and treat illness at a distance. This will help make home care even more of a preferred option.

Home care, unlike in the past, is no longer a well-kept secret. There are, after all, at least 15 good reasons for considering home care for a parent, spouse or other loved one. Please call us today so we can assist you with your home care needs.

source : http://www.experthomecare.com/home_care_for_parent.html

Choosing Home Care Services

Choosing Home Care Services

The first step to finding the right kind of home care agency is determining what level of care is needed. There are two main categories of in-home care services: skilled care, which provides for medical needs, and custodial care. Custodial care may include environmental assistance—help with housekeeping, shopping, meal preparation and the like—or personal care, such as bathing, dressing, and feeding. Some agencies only provide one type of care; others may include both types. Home care organizations include home health agencies; hospices; homemaker and home care aide (HCA) agencies; staffing and private-duty agencies; and companies specializing in medical equipment and supplies, pharmaceuticals, and drug infusion therapy. Different types of home care companies may work together to provide an integrated system of services for a care recipient.

Finding the appropriate senior home care means not only making a decision about agencies and service plans, but ensuring that the individual caregivers who will become such an important part of your loved one’s life are the best possible match.

The kinds of qualities to look for in the caregiver will depend upon the kind of services they are providing. Some senior home care providers will drop by for a few minutes to provide medical services, while others may spend several hours a day with the senior in less formal circumstances. In the latter case, a professional relationship may become a personal relationship that can last for years.

If your loved one needs medical care, they will likely need the services of a licensed professional nurse or a certified nurse’s assistant. Alternatively, they might work with an occupational or physical therapist. Visits from these caregivers are typically either of short duration—15 minutes to half an hour—or of a limited time-frame, such as a few months.

In evaluating the particular individual providing this type of skilled care, it is most important to ensure they are properly certified. If the care provider is Medicare-certified, the home health aide will automatically need to meet professional licensure requirements. Additionally, many senior home care agencies require their personnel to have the appropriate licenses, which can vary from state to state.

Personal care workers, on the other hand, provide the kinds of services that invite not only questions about their professional qualifications, but personal characteristics, as they will be intimately working with your loved one. Personal care services can include help with bathing, dressing, meal preparation, and feeding. This care worker may also help with shopping and cleaning, and even general entertainment.

These senior home care workers often spend at least three hours at a time with their clients. They may come one day a week, or every day. Over time, they can develop a close personal bond with the seniors they care for. “They’ll develop very close relationships,” says Carol Autrey, the owner of Senior Care Associates. “They’ll love their care giver more than anyone.”

Because of this, it is important to ensure that the personal care giver is not only a professional expert, but gets along well with the character traits of the senior. “Some people switch three or four times before they settle on someone,” Autrey says. “Personal care is about companionship.”

For this reason, one of the most important steps a family can take to ensuring their loved one is receiving adequate care is ascertaining the nature of their relationship with the caregiver.

Effective ways of doing this include being on hand to observe the dynamics between the two, and being sure to have follow-up conversations. “They can come by when the caregiver is there, and observe them interacting,” Autrey says. “After they leave, they need to ask questions, like ‘Did you like them’?”

Because the personal care worker often comes to occupy a place of trust with the elderly person, families also need to carefully evaluate his or her qualifications and background. The caregiver should be professionally trained in tasks such as bathing, moving patients in their beds, and helping with prescription medications. Caregivers most often either attend specific training schools or are trained by their in-home care agency.

Families may also want to ask for information about the caregiver’s preceding employment history, and call those references. In addition, many states offer background checks on criminal history. Senior home care agencies typically perform these kinds of evaluations on their employees, Autrey says, and in many cases clients are able to obtain this information by simply asking the agency, if they have decided to work with one.

In addition, senior home care agencies work to monitor the relationship between the caregivers and the elderly. The agency should routinely send in supervisors to evaluate the working climate in the home. “The people that are supervising have to do the in-home visits as well,” Autrey said. “They also need to have a good relationship with the senior.”

Help Seniors To Be Independent

You have spent all of your life raising children, working to feed everybody, buy a home, buy clothes to dress everyone, made all of your own financial decisions and you have done a really good job of it. Now, someone comes along and decides that you can't do this anymore. That they are going to do things to change your life...for your own good. Now tell me, how would you like this to happen to you? Well, it happens to Senior Citizens everyday and sooner or later, you're going to be one yourself, so plan ahead.

Now, you no longer can live alone, you can't be trusted to use the stove and someone else has to pay your bills for you. This is very demeaning for anyone to have to go through. Although for a lot of our Elderly and Senior Citizens, this is something that has been done, but, there are ways of making it a lot easier on the person to be able to cope with this situation. 

Here are a few suggestions that may help:

EXIT COOKING
Let's say that the person isn't able to make a large meal for themselves, or that they couldn't possibly eat as much as they would cook, but that they need a well-balanced meal. How about giving them a gift certificate so they can go out to eat or set something up with a local restaurant so they can go in to eat and the bill will get paid once or twice a month. They get to go out to eat, have a balanced meal and take the leftovers home and heat in the microwave to eat when ever they choose.
OR another alternative would be to set up meals on wheels for them a few times a week or to go to a Senior Center for a meal. You can check this out with your local Office on Aging. Don't they deserve to have someone else cook for them after all of the years that they have been cooking, besides that; they will only need to have deli meat, bread, milk and snacks in the house for in-between. This will save them a lot of money and we all know that the elderly are 100% for saving money on a fixed income. Transportation for the person to the meal site can normally be set up through the meal site or the Office on Aging.

I CAN'T DRIVE
The thought of depending on other people to take you everyplace that you want to go is one of the reasons the elderly continue to want to drive. Now, if they know that they can get from point A to point B all by themselves and it isn't going to be expensive and they can do this all on their own, they don't mind not driving, a matter of fact, most of them look forward to the idea. Get them a monthly bus pass, teach them how to set up transportation using the Seniors Bus or Handicap Bus, get them into a car pool with others from a church or a program that they belong to. Again, the thought of saving on gas, insurance and maintenance on a vehicle will be a blessing for them.

I DON'T REMEMBER
Sometimes you will find that the Senior Citizen used to love to go places and do things and now they almost seem like they are afraid to leave the house. It could be because they don't remember the way they used to and are afraid that they won't know how to get back home. No one likes to feel foolish, especially at that age, and most of the time they won't tell anyone their fears. So, you think of what to do before they ask you about it. Make them business cards (calling cards) to keep with them, with their name address and phone number on. This can be given to people that they would like to have their phone number, to a taxi drive when they are asked where they want to go, or to the person that they are car pooling with. So the "calling card" serves more than one purpose. This helps to take the fright away of not remembering their phone number or address. They always have their calling card with them.

WHAT IF I NEED MY FAMILY
An underlying thought with all elderly is; what if something happens when I am out of the house, will someone get my son or daughter?
Give them a typed piece of paper with everyone's name, address, phone number, cell phone number, e-mail address etc. on it, for them to keep in their wallet. You may even want to make a notation next to the name that should be called and in what order in case of an emergency, by numbering it 1-2-3. This way the senior knows that their loved one will be called and they don't have to worry about not remembering a phone number, place of employment or how to contact them. You may also want to contact your nearest hospital and have your name on file in case there is an emergency. Most elderly don't like the idea of a pocket telephone book because it becomes too confusing for them to follow, just a typed piece of paper so they can see everyone's information on one page is usually self assuring.

Help your Senior Citizen retain their dignity and Independence and have the feeling of control over their lives no matter what their age. They are our older generation and deserve the respect.

Aging, Elder Care, and Senior Retirement Centers

There was a time, not that long ago, when a senior citizen could plan on living with an adult child as the years took their relentless toll. Now senior retirement centers are popping up seemingly everywhere.

It's a good idea to take a look at why these changes are taking place and how each of us can best fit into this new pattern of elder care.

The most glaring difference today is the prevalence of working women. Even a few decades ago, a full-time homemaker often had the time and energy to care for an aging parent in her own residence. Many homes boasted a "mother-in-law" apartment in the basement, over the garage of somewhere else on the premises. In many economic, social and religious groups it was a matter of pride to "care for one's own". In addition, there were few really appealing options beyond that ethic.

The reason there are so many senior retirement centers today is not just the lack of wives at home to take on the responsibility of geriatric care, there is also a preference surfacing in the seniors themselves. No matter how welcoming the environment is, a private home usually doesn't offer the stimulation and peer relationships that the new senior retirement centers are providing. Many seniors frankly want to choose their own support-oriented residence.

If incomes are high enough, savings are adequate or HUD and Medicaid benefits are available, it can be a win/win situation. Full calendars and new friendships can replace the isolation that living in another person's home can produce. Even the most loving adult child is usually busy with the demands of a full life of his/her own. What can ensue is mutual independence.

Not all senior retirement centers are supportive. Careful investigation needs to be done to find a match. However, the rewards that come from putting some serious time and effort into the search can be great.

As this cultural change develops, a surprising factor is surfacing. At one time, the dread of making such arrangements kept seniors from moving on until it was absolutely necessary. What we are starting to observe is a trend involving seniors moving into these new facilities earlier out of choice. Enthusiasm is replacing fear and years of active, support-oriented living can be the unexpected bonus.

Those who doubt the wisdom of selling their homes and moving into a senior retirement center are visiting friends who have made just such a choice. They often find that the pros outweigh the cons. As the new centers appear, competition is emerging and the units, amenities and perks become increasingly attractive. It's getting to be a "don't knock it if you haven't tried it" situation with positive results