While assisted living is similar to home care, congregate housing, board and care homes, and nursing homes, it differs from those programs in significant ways.

Home Care.

The minimum time block for which home care usually can be scheduled is two hours. While this is ideal for help with dressing, bathing, housekeeping, and meal preparation, two-hour time blocks are inappropriate when assistance needs to be available throughout the day and evening. (more…)

Caring for Seniors and People with Disabilities in Their Own Home
Summary: Home care service providers assist elderly and disabled individuals with activities of daily living. This assistance often allows individuals to remain in their own home rather than needing to move to an assisted living facility. (more…)

We all want to protect our loved ones from danger, but it’s impossible to be with them every moment of the day. And unfortunate as it is, scam artists see your aging Mom or Dad as an easy target, knowing full well that elderly individuals are more likely to fall for their scams. Elder fraud often goes unreported, (more…)

As the United States people age, the focus on the number of looked for services will have to line up with the quality of the care rendered. For many years a spotlight has been placed on how well residents who reside in a nursing home are treated. Some understand that the level of care an individual obtains is dependent on how much family members are involved. Some mature children have trouble with placing their senior parents in a nursing home because of the negative press. (more…)

Medical care for the elderly takes center stage making mental health care take a back seat, especially in nursing homes. A great deal of time is spent assessing vital bodily functions in order to ensure nursing home residents are as comfortable as possible. Because this is so time consuming, mental health care is easily overlooked even though it can add so much to quality of life. (more…)

The Costs of Senior Care Options

When planning for our retirement, most of us allocate money into a 401K or another savings program to take advantage of tax write-offs and to make sure we will be able to enjoy a nice lifestyle when we are no longer working from 9 to 5. We imagine using the money to supplement our monthly social security checks to enjoy vacations and other leisure activities while taking advantage of all those senior discounts. (more…)

I got up around 6:45 one morning and made my way to the kitchen to start the day. As I stood at the sink, something caught my eye out the front window. My neighbor’s front door appeared to be open and the screen door was flapping in the wind. This was a bit odd, because the temperatures were in the low 30’s and the north wind was howling… not exactly the kind of weather for leaving the door wide open. I stood there a few minutes to see if someone was coming in or out of the door and had possibly propped it open temporarily. (more…)