How Personal Care at Home Helps Long-Distance Family Caregivers
About one out of ten caregivers live at least an hour from their parents. You live in another state, but your parents need additional help if they’re going to retain their independence while aging at home. What do you do when you live too far away to help more than once or twice a year?
Research Personal Care at Home
Look into personal care at home services. Instead of hoping your parents are okay every day, you can hire caregivers to stop in each day or once a week and see how they’re doing. If they need anything, the home care aide takes care of things for you.
Suppose the caregiver arrives and finds your parents are out of milk and eggs. The caregiver helps them create a shopping list and takes them to the store. They have a helper when it comes to reading store pricing labels and carrying the bags from the car and into the house.
Personal care at home can help with organization and scheduling. Your mom and dad have different care needs, so their medical appointments often overlap. Instead of struggling to figure it out, the personal care aide can arrange appointments in a manner that makes them easy to manage. If your mom and dad are going to be in the same building, they could have appointments that follow each other or occur at the same time.
Your parents have caregivers available to help them with housekeeping. They don’t have to struggle to carry the hamper to the laundry room. Your dad no longer has to mop and vacuum. Caregivers can also cook their meals and do the dishes after.
How Do You Get Started?
It’s time to call your mom and dad and talk about their daily routines. Where do they struggle, and what do they still find easy to do? Make a list and come up with the most critical care needs from what they can’t do. That’s where caregivers are needed.
Just because you live miles from your mom isn’t reason enough to put her at risk. With the helping hand from personal care at home aides, your mom has the help she needs without you needing to move to her hometown.
Every week or so, the home care agency gives you a report. You always know how your parents are doing with their caregiver’s help. If new services are needed, or some care services seem unnecessary, you’ll learn more about that and make adjustments.
Talk to a personal care at home agency to learn more about the services that help your mom and dad remain independent at home. Ask questions, get prices, and finish the call by scheduling services.
Sources:
https://www.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/ppi/2021/05/caregiving-in-the-united-states-50-plus.doi.10.26419-2Fppi.00103.022.pdf