How to Successfully Transition your Parents to Live-In Care

Seeking Solutions

In today’s busy lifestyle, the average adult has so many responsibilities. Juggling the endless work-life balance while trying to carve out time for your family, friends and yourself is a daily struggle. When you add a loved one with a progressive and serious health condition to the mix, the balancing act can soon become overwhelming.

In addition to managing your own responsibilities, you are faced with supporting your loved one in navigating their healthcare journey with its many physical, mental, and emotional challenges as one ages. It’s a struggle to go through the process of new diagnoses, implement changes to their lifestyle, medicines, diets, exercise/rehab regimen and doctor’s visits to name a few. Finding yourself in this situation can be stressful and isolating as you look for the best way to care for your loved one. Feelings of guilt are normal when your time and attention is divided between their care and your day-to-day obligations.

Not many people realize this, but 24/7 live-in care is a truly comforting and helpful solution.
The following situations are a few examples of where your parent or loved on can significantly benefit from having 24 hour, around the clock care:

• One or both parents’ health has significantly deteriorated in the
  last few weeks.

• One partner has notable physical limitations and the other partner
  has serious mental health or cognition challenges. This specific
  combination can take a huge toll on the “healthier” of the two
  partners,which will eventually impact the health of both individuals
  if live-in care or 24 hour care is not correctly planned in a timely
  manner.

• Instances in which your loved-one is :

  • Living with a progressive, degenerative condition like moderate
    Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or Dementia

  • Undergoing cancer or dialysis treatment

  • Recovering from spinal or joint-related orthopaedic procedures

Live-in Caregiver’s Responsibilities

Successfully setting up live-in care is completely different from arranging hourly home care. Beginning with responsibilities – live-in caregivers provide a variety of functions to help make yours and your loved one’s daily lives comfortable. They provide daily physical and emotional support so that your parent’s can remain safe and healthy in the familiar environment of their own home.

Physical responsibilities include:

• Personal Care

  • Bathing and washing

  • Dressing

  • Medication management

  • Meal prep

• Chores and Errands

  • Light house cleaning

  • Groceries

  • Prescription pick-ups

  • Personal grooming appointments (visits to the hair salon, etc.)

  • Pet car

  • Gardening

The value of emotional support provided to both parents and their children by live-in caregivers is priceless. Care Mountain’s thoroughly vetted and experienced caregivers are thoughtfully matched to your loved ones based on their needs, conditions, schedules, and personalities. In time, they will become more familiar with your parent’s health conditions than you or even their doctors. This is only natural given the amount of time they will spend with your parents and their professional expertise. This can be a huge asset for you to help balance your many responsibilities, if you collaborate constructively with the live-in 24/7 caregivers.

Please note:

• Building a good relationship with your parent’s caregiver will
  help you gain a vast amount of knowledge into your parent’s
  condition, what to expect if their condition is degenerative, and
  mental preparedness for next steps in their journey of care.

• Remember, treating your parent’s caregiver with mutual respect and
  trust (instead of thinking of them like a maid service!) is hugely
  important in fostering intangible goodwill towards your parents and
  results in the comfort of knowing that your parents are in good
  hands.

Live-in Caregivers Personalities

Live-in caregivers are in a special class of professionals and differ from their hourly caregiver counterparts in personality and operational management. Given the personalized nature of live-in care, these caregivers operate at a different pace from their hourly counterparts. They take the time to engage with your loved ones and schedule the day around their comfort levels. Live-in caregivers are patient to help your loved ones with daily tasks and attentive to their condition specific needs.

Since they will spend all day with your parents, they have more timeto accomplish all the tasks needed to maintain daily physical and emotional support without cramming too much in one part of the day before a shift ends. Live-in caregivers have a nurturing bedside manner along with years of training to become experts in their method of caregiving.

Live-in caregivers also maintain a commitment to the 24/7 care model with their scheduling and availability. The administrative process at Care Mountain ensures that these caregivers are able to provide continuous care and work well in this demanding environment.

Communication is KEY to getting Live-in 24 hour Care Right

Planning long-term care for aging parents can be a challenging task to navigate. Often, a son or daughter will struggle with how to broach the subject with their parents to help them become comfortable with the idea of having live-in help and developing a smooth transition plan to implement the live-in care delivery model. This hesitation is only natural – most parents are usually resistant to the idea of strangers in their home for an extended period. They are also worried about their privacy and fear that live-in care could mean compromising their sense of independence.

With over a decade of experience in the DFW area, Care Mountain is uniquely positioned to offer both advice and solutions in these scenarios. Our expertise stems from helping thousands of families navigate these situations. In our experience, the key to success in these instances is to listen to all concerns –big or small. No concern should be deemed irrational or dismissed lightly. Once you fully understand the range of their concerns, the process becomes a lot simpler to offer reassurances.

It’s important to remember that all concerns are valid and warrant open and transparent communication to address and work through them.

As a son or daughter, it’s equally important to express your concerns about balancing your parent’s well-being related to their daily routines with healthy eating, hygiene, and safety with minimizing fall risks while balancing your own work responsibilities, personal family life, and needing a break for yourself without feelings of guilt.

Care Mountain’s Process

Care Mountain follows a 3-step process to help you successfully implement live-in caregiving for your loved one.

1. Quality Candidates: Care Mountain’s caregivers have national background checks, extensive experience in caregiving, and training in a variety of conditions ranging from Alzheimer’s, Dementia, Parkinson’s, to Orthopaedic post-op care, cancer treatment and more

2. Personality and Skills:
Care Mountain’s caregivers are carefully selected for their caring bedside manner, tenured resumes across several specialties and conditions, as well as complete commitment to their roles with 24/7 availability for their patients

3. Scheduling and Communication: Care Mountain’s administrative team has a rigorous scheduling process to ensure that care is consistent and coordinated across a team of 2-3 caregivers assigned per patient in live-in shifts that typically last 3-7 days

b. Caregivers are clearly assigned to working days, or nights and weekdays, or weekends beforehand so that there is continuity in care

c. Scheduling and caregiver requests are clearly discussed and aligned to meet your loved one’s needs. Care Mountain publishes the roster of caregiver timings at least a week in advance and communicates any planned scheduling changes with notice

Benefits to You

The expert team at Care Mountain and their highly experienced caregivers provide significant support to helping you establish a successful live-in caregiver team for your loved one. A set of good live-in caregivers can become your biggest support as they help you by providing compassion and dignity to your parents.

Contact Care Mountain for help – we providelive in care, or 24 hour care, across Dallas and Fort Worth in areas like Preston Hollow, Highland Park, Southlake, Richardson, Plano, McKinney, and Arlington – we have 7 offices across the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex and are no more than a few miles from your home. You will see that an experienced live-in caregiver is an invaluable asset to hold on to for both your peace of mind, and your parents.

2022-04-28 20:35:15

How to Successfully Transition your Parents to Live-In Care