Feeling overwhelmed during your visits to an aging loved one? When you live far away, it’s easy to spend your limited time together tackling problems instead of making memories. Integrating home care services changes the dynamic—it moves the focus from “crisis management” to “quality time,” making every visit more enjoyable for the whole family.
Pay Attention to Specific Areas
Safety is always important for seniors aging in place, so part of the visit is a valuable opportunity for family caregivers to see firsthand the safety hazards in the home. Checking for excessive clutter, poor lighting, and expired food is a great start.
Other areas, like physical wellness, cognitive changes, and whether seniors are having trouble with medications, are also important areas of life to check.
Talk Honestly But Carefully About Concerns
Family caregivers who live far away might have some valid concerns about their seniors’ health and well-being. The trick is to have conversations about these concerns without causing seniors to feel defensive or upset and shut down.
Using collaborative language and asking seniors what will help them to feel safer and make their lives easier works much better. From there, families can ease into solutions that can help, like working with home care providers.
Review Health Details
Catching up with health details can sometimes feel easier in person, as well. When family caregivers are there for a visit, they can talk with seniors about how they’re feeling and what they’re experiencing. They can also ask questions about what they’re noticing as they observe daily life for the seniors they love.
Checking in with health issues helps family caregivers feel better informed when they’re back at home.
Listen Carefully
Seniors need to know that the people who love them are listening to what they say and sometimes to what they don’t say. Small things seniors might mention offhandedly can give family caregivers clues to help their seniors have the experience they want as they age in place.
When family caregivers practice active listening, seniors feel heard and may be more open about how family members can help.
Take Time for Just Visiting
As much as there is for family caregivers to do in these often too-short visits with the seniors they love, they really need to just spend time with them. Being able to simply enjoy time together is a really important part of the caregiving puzzle.
Letting home care providers take care of many of the hands-on tasks involved in caregiving frees up time and energy for family caregivers and seniors to focus on just enjoying their visit.
Long-distance family caregivers may not be able to visit their senior family members as often as they would like, but they can make the most of every visit. Home care services can help along the way, supporting seniors when family caregivers are there in person and offering even more help when everyone heads home.
If you or an aging loved one are considering In-Home Care in north Texas, please contact Arcy Healthcare today. We have two home care companies:
- Arcy at Home (Dallas office) 214-424-6100 – for caregivers and skilled nurses
- Living Well Senior Care (Denton office) 940-215-0209 – for caregivers
My name is Jimmie Stapleton. I am the founder and CEO of Arcy Healthcare. Arcy Healthcare includes Arcy Hospice, Arcy Supportive Care, Arcy Home Health and Arcy at Home.
Arcy Hospice was opened in 2007 to provide care and support for individuals and families facing a life limiting illness. It was established after my wife Ellen, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer, had completed her chemo and radiation therapies. At that time, things were looking positive, and we wanted to do something for our community that had been so supportive of our family during her treatments. Unfortunately, the cancer returned a few years later, and she subsequently passed away under our care in 2010.
In the years that followed, I began to see the need to provide the same level of excellent care to patients across the continuum of care. Therefore, we have added a home health division (Arcy Home Health), a palliative care division (Arcy Supportive Care), and two home care divisions, (Arcy at Home and Living Well Senior Care). With the addition of these divisions, we can meet most of the post-acute care needs for you and your family in your home.
I started Arcy Hospice with my wife as my inspiration to provide exceptional care and support in the patient’s home, where they are surrounded by family and where they feel most comfortable. I’m proud to say our dedicated staff provides some of the most respected in-home care in Dallas-Fort Worth, treating every patient like a member of our own family.
Please let us know if we can enrich the quality of life for you or a loved one.
Sincerely,
Jimmie Stapleton – Founder and CEO
Arcy Healthcare
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