What to Do When Your Parents Need Help

What do you do when your parents need help with daily activities? This is a question that turns out to really be a process, not an event. However, the process usually starts with an event, such as happened to my friend. In my friend’s case, her mother had a few falls that have landed her in the hospital for a few days each time. Fortunately, my friend’s mom had long term care insurance that could be activated.

I offered to help my friend investigate her care options. If you read our other article about Assisted Living you would know about this option, but if you are like most people, you would think of nursing homes as the next step.  By searching the web for nursing homes we immediately found the following links:

www.senioradvisor.com
www.aplaceformom.com
www.lookingforcare.com

Further down the search results, there were other listings with locations near them. It turns out that the places above are referral services and if you request information, your phone will start ringing off the hook. You might not want to go that route. So, if you do a search, be sure to scroll down and look for the listings of actual care facilities in your area.

Initially, I thought her mom needed nursing home care and these were prohibitively expensive. We didn’t investigate assisted living at that time because we didn’t really understand it and it didn’t seem like a viable option. Since my friend’s mom has enough money, she opted for in-home care for 4 hours a day. This routine worked fine for a few months.

But, after a few months, her mother had another fall that resulted in another few days in the hospital, followed quickly by two more events. These events left her mom weaker than before and left her father totally stressed out and tired.

So, my friend bumped up her parent’s in-home help to 24/7 care. It turns out that this was a super expensive option and really didn’t serve their needs. After the hospital visits my friend’s mother was no longer able to the meal planning or meal preparation. So that fell to her father and because her mother was sleeping a lot, her father was alone a lot of time. The result was that her parents weren’t eating properly and they felt isolated and lonely.

This situation weighed heavily on my friend because she had committed to taking care of her parents, then she and I had an epiphany. Why not check out assisted living maybe it would address their two biggest issues, meals, and social interaction.

So started their great transition, from their home of 50 years to an assisted living apartment about 5 miles away.

What will you do when your parents need help?