Elderly Care: Helping your elderly family member to age in place can feel like a big goal at first.
That’s why breaking it down into smaller steps is a great idea. Putting some focus on each of these areas can help quite a lot as you’re looking for the answers and elderly care for your senior.
Update Lighting to Improve Visibility
If you can only make one change right now for your senior, go through her home and make sure that the lighting that she has is sufficient. Add lighting fixtures if necessary and make sure that you replace burned-out bulbs with LED lights wherever possible. This can help to dramatically improve the lighting for your senior. If she has any vision issues whatsoever, improved lighting is definitely going to help.
Look for Other Ways to Improve Accessibility in the Home
It’s also important to look at other aspects of your senior’s home that aren’t working for her the way that they are right now. For instance, if items your elderly family member uses all the time are difficult to access, that makes life more difficult for her. Removing clutter, making adjustments like installing handrails, and looking for other ways to make your senior’s home more accessible are all going to help her in the long run.
Pay Particular Attention to Vulnerable Areas, Like the Bathroom
While you’re going through your senior’s home, pay close attention to areas of the home where she’s especially vulnerable. For most seniors, that means rooms like her bedroom and her bathroom. Look closely at safety in these rooms and look for ways to ensure that your senior has what she needs in those areas.
Elderly Care: Get Some Help Lined Up Now
Even if your elderly family member doesn’t seem to need a lot of help just yet, start lining up personal care at home now. That’s going to help your senior to get used to accepting help, for starters, and your senior may need more help than either of you realize. Elderly care providers can help you both to learn and to understand what exactly she does need. Then personal care at home helps you to put those solutions in place and continue to assess her safety.
Aging in place is going to look different for your senior as she ages and as her health changes. These steps are going to help you to continue to find what she needs at each of those stages.
