Determine Your Elderly Parents Needs When Looking For Memory Care Facilities
If your elderly parents have been affected with a disease that affects their memory, such as alzheimer's or dementia, they are going to need additional assistance and care as their disease progresses. If they are in the early stages of their disease, now is a good time to start looking around for nursing home or assisted living facility that specifically provides memory care for seniors.
Know What Assistance Your Loved One Needs
The first thing you need to do, before you even start looking at facilities that offer memory care, is determine what type of assistance your loved one needs. You can do this by observing your parents and by paying attention to the their current medical needs. Here are a few questions you need to ask yourself so that you can determine what level of care your loved one will need from a memory care facility:
- Does your love one need care to manage diabetes?
- Do they need a special diet?
- Do they need help with eating?
- Do they need assistance with any ongoing medical treatments?
- How mobile are they? Do they need assistance getting around?
- Do they wander around?
- Do they show signs of unexplained aggression?
- Do they need help with using the restroom and bathroom?
Your answers to these questions will determine what type of facility that your loved one needs. Memory care facilities offer services such as meal preparation, medical assistance, mobility assistance, and bathroom assistance. For individuals who wander or are aggressive, they can offer increased assistance.
However, your loved one may not need all of these services. Each of these services cost money, so make sure you know what your loved on really needs.
Look For A Safe Facility That Can Meet Your Loved One's Needs
When looking at care facilities, you need to make sure that your loved one's immediate needs will be addressed and that the community is a safe place for them.
To start with, make sure that any facility you look at can meet the needs that you have identified your parent or parents as having from the questions above. You should also make sure that the facility can meet any future needs that your parents may develop over time.
Once you have found a few facilities that provide the assistance your loved one will need, make sure that you are comfortable with the safety level of the facility.
Be sure to ask about the following safety features:
- How are the buildings and ground secured?
- What type of training do all staff members have?
- How often are staff members trained?
- What is the ratio between residents and staff both during the day and at night?
- Is there a nurse on stay? How often is the nurse available?
- Is there a physician on staff?
- How are care plans for residents developed and passed on to one another?
It is important that any care facility you put your loved on in is secure and has well-trained staff members who can meet your loved ones social-emotional as well as medical needs. Individuals who need memory care often require a lot of assistance, so make sure the facility you choose can provide your loved one with high-quality and well trained assistance. For more information, contact a company like Gateway Living.