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…)

In better facilities, the design of the building reflects the philosophy of promoting independence. Residents usually live either in private rooms with baths, individual temperature controls, and doors that lock or in small apartments with kitchenettes. They often bring their own furniture. The decor and scale are homelike throughout the building, often with one or more small sitting rooms that encourage residents to visit with each other and entertain guests. Many assisted living home facilities explicitly avoid fluorescent lighting, long corridors, tile floors, and the nursing stations that are associated with nursing homes residents. (more…)

Changes in the Family

Every human being has the need for affection and to have someone toward whom he can express love and affection. Family and friends supply this need. Here, too, changes take place as people grow older. Already noted is the fact that women have to take into account the time when all of the children have left home. Men retire and lose some of their old friends. Other friends of the older couple move away. The later years also present the possibility of the death and dying of one of the marriage partners. (more…)

There are really no wrong reasons to choose an assisted living home arrangement in a senior community. With assisted living a person can still be as independent and free as they always have been, plus they also don’t have to worry about all the things that may become more difficult as times goes on. (more…)