Four Ways to Help Your Senior to Adjust to Help from Home Care Providers
You may already know that it’s time to bring in additional help for your senior, but if she’s not ready to do that yet you might feel as if you’re waging an uphill battle. There are some things that you can do in order to ease the adjustment process for your elderly family member.
Talk to Your Senior about Her Wants and Needs from Home Care Services
Home Care in Reston, VA: Adjusting to Home Care Help
Sometimes seniors have misconceptions about what home care providers do and don’t handle. Your senior may also have concerns about what accepting help means for her. If you set aside time to talk about what your elderly family member needs and wants from elder care services, it’s a lot easier to deal with any misunderstandings that crop up. It can also be a lot easier to reassure your senior about what she’s gaining, rather than losing.
Put Together a Written List of What She’s Okay with and What She Isn’t
It also helps if you’ve got a written set of notes that detail what your elderly family member wants from this experience. It alleviates a lot of guesswork or filling in the blanks that you might do otherwise. You’ve also got a reference that you and your senior can revisit later and change as needed. This helps your elderly family member to feel that you’re taking her concerns seriously, too.
Establish an Area Where You Can Keep Information Related to Caregiving
Set up a command center somewhere in your senior’s home in which you can keep notes and information both for home care providers and about your senior’s health and other requirements. This ensures that all important information that everybody needs is easily accessible.
Revisit Your Senior’s Plans and Concerns Periodically
Things change, both with your senior’s health and needs and also in what help she’s willing to accept. Often after a period of working with home care providers and experiencing what non-invasive help can do for her, your senior may be more open to loosening up what help she allows. By talking about things again after she’s had some time, you’re giving your senior a chance to get even more benefits from home care.
Hiring home care providers doesn’t have to mean that your elderly family member is giving up or that she’s incapable. In fact, senior care providers are often able to make your aging adult more capable and give her more independence if she just lets them do that.