Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Advantages Of Non Medical Home Care

By Essie Osborn


If you are part of the Baby Boomer generation you may soon be asking yourself what you can do to insure that you can remain where you are and age in place as you grow older. Sooner or later you may be in need of assistance with the everyday activities that make up your day. One very viable option available to you is non medical home care.

The last thing anyone wants is to be forced by circumstances to leave the house you have lived in for decades. One of the advantages of these services is that they can enable the senior to stay in their residence indefinitely. The skills that the providers bring to their clients can relieve them of the worry of not being able to live alone.

Service plans can be a combination of family, friends and service workers and many agencies are designed for low income clientele and financed by the government. Some of these services can be hot meals delivered to your front door or a companion who volunteers to stop by for a visit once or twice a week. The companions sometimes take the senior out for shopping or movies and sometimes will stay and visit for two or three hours with them.

Non-profit organizations also offer services for seniors that do not require nursing assistance. Most have low income housing for seniors and many offer transitional housing that allows them to age in place with many levels of assistance offered in the same facility. The client in these cases remains as an independent resident so long as they can fend for themselves with or without assistance from the outside.

When aging in place is the goal the client and their family can select which services they feel are needed for the client. The provider may be responsible for housekeeping and cooking or in some cases they may serve as a companion that either lives in or spends a full shift with the senior in question.

Choosing the right person is almost as important as choosing the correct services needed. You will want to be certain that they have been vetted completely and that prior clients have been happy with their work. Agency personnel are usually bonded as well as thoroughly investigated prior to being hired. Should you decide to hire privately and not use an agency it will be important to check out each applicant before hiring anyone for the job.

A problem that occurs when you have an aging parent or sibling is that when you have a family to tend to there is not enough time to help your mom or dad also. This is especially true today when there are so many households where both adults work full time jobs. The advantage with having an assistant for them is that you can be relatively certain that their needs are being met and you will have the time to spend with them without the stress of caring for them at the same time.

Being able to stay in the home they own is very important to people and as they age it becomes even more important. Aging in place is possible for most seniors if they have access to the appropriate resources and the financial means to afford the extra cost. As a whole, bringing the assistance to the senior is far more cost efficient than the alternative of placing them in a nursing home or retirement facility.




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