Survive (and Enjoy!) the Holidays with Home Care Help

Instead of heading to the mall to check a few items off your holiday shopping list, you’re taking mom to a doctor’s appointment and then heading out to the pharmacy to pick up her meds. Instead of looking forward to spending time with the relatives at your annual holiday gathering, you’re dreading the extra housework you’ll have to do on top of making sure Dad gets bathed each morning.

Can you identify with the lyrics to the Faith Hill song, “Where are you Christmas? Why can’t I find you? Why have you gone away?” It’s easy to get so lost in the responsibilities that come with caring for an aging parent that you can’t pause to enjoy the festivities of the season.

Yet, it’s possible to survive and enjoy the holidays if you ask for help. Get in touch with an in-home senior care agency to find out more about how the following five home care services can help to save your sanity during the holiday season and throughout the year.

1. Transportation – Having trouble fitting all your loved one’s myriad doctor appointments and errands into your schedule? Enlist the help of a professional caregiver to accompany your loved one on routine trips to the doctor’s or grocery store. Caregivers employed by a senior home care agency are typically bonded and insured, and provide assistance for your loved one before, during and after the outing.
   
   While a caregiver helps your loved one with errands, you can use that time to check off items on your own to-do list. Or, you can devote the time you would have spent sitting in the doctor’s office doing something that you and your loved one will both enjoy instead, such as gift shopping or attending a holiday event.
2. Housekeeping – Visits from friends and family members around the holidays create a lot of extra chores around the house that your loved one may be unable to handle due to lack of mobility or stamina. A professional caregiver can help out by accomplishing light housekeeping tasks such as dusting, vacuuming, changing bed sheets, doing laundry, or taking out the trash.
   
   Instead of dreading the arrival of family members because of all the work you’ll have to put into cleaning up the house, you and your loved one will be able to fully enjoy the visit and appreciate the family togetherness—one of the aspects of the holiday that older adults most look forward to.
3. Companionship – The holidays can be a sad and lonely time for seniors who have lost a spouse or have busy families that cannot come visit as much as they would like. Receiving regular visits from a hired caregiver, who often quickly becomes more of a friend, can help lift your loved one’s spirits by offering conversation, creating opportunities to reminisce, and encouraging mind-stimulating activities.
   
   Visit as much as you can, but instead of feeling guilty about the times you can’t spend with Mom or Dad, rest assured your loved one can still receive healthy social interaction.
4. Meal Assistance – Mom might now need extra help preparing the traditional Thanksgiving meal as she has always done, or perhaps even planning and preparing daily meals has become too much. Instead of worrying about how Mom might leave the stove on all night or that she’s not eating well, let a professional caregiver assist with planning out healthy meals for the week, creating a shopping list, and supervising meal preparation and cleanup.
5. Personal Care – If your loved one needs help with bathing, managing incontinence and other personal tasks of daily living , as a family caregiver, you likely spend a great deal of time each day attending to those needs. Hiring a trained professional caregiver to provide that assistance will not only spare you time and stress, but may also spare your loved one a little dignity.
   
   Instead of spending your mornings on nursing duty as you walk Dad through his wake-up routine, you’ll be able to spend quality time with him as a son or daughter again.

Receiving extra help for even just a few hours a week can free you up to spend the holidays with your loved one how you would like to, not how you have to.

For more information about how a professional caregiver can meet your loved one’s specific needs and to discuss scheduling and pricing information, call alocal in-home senior care agency.

For more info: http://www.caregiverstress.com

In-Home Care During a Recession

In this video series, certified senior advisor Mary Alexander from Home Instead Senior Care talks about how to provide in-home care during difficult financial times. The information in this video will introduce you to less expensive care options, financing possibilities, enlisting support for caregiving duties and how to get paid for your services.

In this video series, certified senior advisor Mary Alexander from Home Instead Senior Care talks about how to provide in-home care during difficult financial times. The information in this video will introduce you to less expensive care options, financing possibilities, enlisting support for caregiving duties and how to get paid for your services.

For more videos go to:  http://www.caregiverstress.com

   

Helping seniors live at home longer

The new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act aims to provide at-home alternatives to nursing home care.

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United HomeCare Services home health aide Wendy Cerrato hugs Olga Socarras… (Joe Raedle, Getty Images)

Patricia McGinnis has six brothers and sisters who help her take care of their 89-year-old mother. Though their mother is alert and able to live on her own, she is blind and has balance problems that have led to several falls, for which she has received care.

It takes all of the siblings working together to help their mother stay at home. But every day, as president of the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, McGinnis deals with people who don't have that choice and must live in nursing homes because they lack the financial resources or social support to remain at home as they age.

Home-based concern is progressively more seen as a legit and less expensive substitute for nursing home concern. The Patient Defense and Reasonable Concern Act, signed in law by President Obama in March 2010, incorporates provisions to aid persons who wanna be in their properties longer.

“I think it is possibly one of the most significant reforms to long-term concern since Medicare and Medicaid went in effect in 1965,” McGinnis said. “That is very important, so I’m indeed exhilarated about it.”

About 1.5 million persons live in nursing properties in the U.S., in accordance with the Centers for Illness Control and Obviation. And more than Ten million US Citizens — as a rule persons Sixty Five or perhaps older — need long-term services and support to help them with every day actions, in accordance with the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Elinor Ginzler, senior vice president for livable communities at AARP, said the organization is constantly fighting for more financing to help persons be in their properties longer.

“Nursing properties are not a first option,” she said. “Persons like where they’re living. We researched the Fifty-plus population and uncovered that Eighty Six percent of them wanna be in their properties.”

One of the top reasons is economical.

The cost of remaining at a nursing home ranges from about bucks 40,000 to bucks 85,000 a year, in accordance with a latest report by John Hancock Economical Services Inc., a cover and economical services corporation. The average cost of a home healthiness aide, on the different side, is about bucks 37,000 a year.

A long-term concern cover policy McGinnis acquired some time ago spends funds on almost all of her woman’s medical care at home. However not each one has that type of cover. “If you look at the infant boomers coming up, I wonder how we will spend funds on all of that,” she said. “The average retirement reserves of persons Fifty Five or perhaps older is bucks 29,000 a year.”

New provisions of the Reasonable Concern Act should help. The most motivated part of the act to do with long-term concern is the Public Living Help Services and Supports Act, or perhaps CLASS — a voluntary, customer-funded cover plan to cover long-term concern costs.

“It is an indeed diverse and new way of looking at the delivery and financing of long-term concern in the U.S.,” said Dee Mahan, deputy chief of healthiness policy at FamiliesUSA, a nonprofit medical care advocacy organization. “I think the program is indeed, indeed significant.”

The cover plan is akin to those at present accessible in the personal market, however there are some major differences. First, the program will be managed by the authority. Second, any working grown age Eighteen or perhaps older will be capable to sign up, in spite of any preexisting medical condition, and benefits will be fine for as far as somebody needs long-term concern.

And not like most personal long-term concern cover plans, which limit how funds might be applied, the authority plan will proffer benefits that can be applied for a large number of costs incorporating hiring a home concern supplier and doing home amendments.

Before obtaining every day money benefits through the authority program, persons will have to pay premiums for as a minimum 5 years and work for a minimum of 3 of those years. The benefits will be computed on the bases of the degree of incapacity or perhaps cognitive harm. Even Though the average every day benefit will not be specified till October 2012, the law states that it should be no less than bucks Fifty, and it is anticipated to be about bucks Seventy Five, in accordance with a Congressional Budget Office report.

Employers that take part in the program will independently sign up their workers, who will be capable to opt out. Other Ones will be capable to sign up individually.

The cost of premiums has yet to be defined, however it is going to hinge on age and will be less expensive for younger persons. The cost for low-revenue persons and full-time students will start at bucks Five a month. The plan will be funded completely through premiums — one of its only issues, Ginzler said.

“CLASS runs the possibility of not being used optimally,” she said. “For it to work, you have to have a considerable pool of persons paying in the system. And the truth is that most persons do not wanna think about their need for long-term concern; they would quite plan for their funeral than their incapacity.”

Different provisions in the Reasonable Concern Act will in addition help persons be in their properties longer if they pick.

Extended spousal impoverishment defense: Before obtaining Medicaid help for nursing home concern, persons must first “outlay down” their assets to an amount set by the state (in effect, impoverishment). Though, home-dwelling spouses of persons who obtain Medicaid help at nursing properties might preserve a definite quantity of revenue and assets to safeguard these pairs against total economical ruin.

The same defense doesn’t apply to the spouses of persons obtaining Medicaid for home-based services — however the Reasonable Concern Act has a provision that permits persons to get Medicaid help for home- and public-based concern without forcing their spouses to outlay all of their assets. The provision will go in effect in 2014 and will last for 5 years.

“Public-first option option”: In accordance with FamiliesUSA, Thirty Five states supply home- and public-based concern services through Medicaid. When budgets are tight, though, these services are amongst the first to get cut, Ginzler said. The “public first” option, accessible to states beginning that October, is aimed to extend these programs through a Six percent boost in the quantity of matching funds the authority proffers to states for the cost of these services.

Funds follows the individual: A demonstration plan is assisting persons on Medicaid leave nursing properties and return to their communities. It proffers case management services and help with home amendments, one-time housing costs and help with different costs related to that transition. To be eligible for benefits, persons were needed to live in nursing properties for as a minimum 6 months; the Reasonable Concern Act specifies that they require to stay there only Ninety consecutive days. It in addition expands the plan for 5 years.

Balancing inducement charges program: That program, which will run from October through the end of September 2015, will boost federal matching funds by up to Five percent for state Medicaid programs that supply home- and public-based concern. The program will apply to states that at present outlay less than fifty percent of their Medicaid funds for long-term services on noninstitutional concern. The plan will in addition help states boost access to long-term services and standardize eligibility criterion.

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