There are lots of expert tips you can find about making senior living decisions for elderly parents, but sometimes, you just want to hear it from someone who has been in your shoes.
In this blog, you’ll hear from four family caregivers who helped make important, medical, financial, and senior living decisions with their parent or spouse. You’ll also hear from a few older parents themselves. It wasn’t always easy, they say, but, in the end, they’re all glad they made the move to Highgate Senior Living.
Here are six tips from family members for making the assisted living decision.
Denial is a common emotion for family caregivers. It can sometimes feel easier to ignore the fact that your parents are aging than it is to actually accept the situation. The truth is refusing to acknowledge a difficult situation can actually prevent someone from getting the care they need.
Whether it’s you, your siblings, or even your other parent who is in denial about a loved one needing help, it’s important to talk with them as soon as possible and plan for the future.
In Shelia’s case, it was her father who was in denial about his wife’s health.
“[My mom] fell at home, and I really thought we should put her in assisted living, but my dad was in denial,” recalls Shelia, whose mom now lives at Highgate at Yakima. “It was a mental war. You don’t want to just put your mother in assisted living without it being her decision. But I thought, ‘I can’t have this on my conscience if anything were to happen.’ So I sat them down and said, ‘OK, we need to make a change because we need to do what’s best for her.’”
When it comes to making decisions about assisted living, it might feel easier to just do everything yourself. It’s important to remember that, although your parent is getting older and they might need a little more help than they once did, they are still an adult.
What older adults need — and want — is assistance and support making important decisions.
“My sons were very solicitous,” says Luella, who lives at Highgate at Vancouver. “They asked me about what I wanted as I was aging — and they listened to me.”
The more involved your parent is in the search, the better. Of course, you can do much of the legwork, but have meaningful discussions with your parent about their preferences and desires.
If your parent is resistant, validate their feelings and then help them understand your concerns. “They have to know what’s going on,” says Caroline, who also lives at Highgate at Vancouver. “Why do the kids feel that their parents have to be put into an assisted living?” Involving your parent in the conversation allows them to be more receptive.
If you Google “assisted living communities near me,” you’ll likely be overwhelmed by your options. Instead of starting with search engines, ask family, friends, and physicians for referrals.
Ask if they’ve ever done research on the best assisted living communities and inquire about how it turned out: Was their loved one happy with the selection? Is there anything they wish they’d researched but didn’t?
“Mandy Ketchum [Community Relations Coordinator at Highgate at Yakima] was recommended to me by a friend,” Shelia says. “She said that Mandy had been in the business and knew a lot about senior care. I called Mandy, and she was great. She said she’d meet with me and I should write down all my questions. I wrote down 20 questions, and I had my dad do the same thing. We interviewed her, and our interview with her went really well. I could tell she was a real advocate for seniors. I felt like she would make sure whatever my mom needed she would have.”
When you go in for a tour, there are a lot of questions you’ll want to ask. Don’t forget to pay close attention to the team members and care partners and how they’re interacting with one another and the residents.
“Every time I was at Highgate, I saw activities. I saw lots of staff,” says Rick, whose mother lives at Highgate at Yakima. “The staff were very engaging, very friendly, and very visible. That was a big deal to me.”
The quality of the care partners was important to Kim, too: “My mom was at a different facility prior to moving to Highgate, and they did not know how to care for her. When I would visit my mom, it didn’t seem like the staff was properly trained, and they were always calling me with another ‘instance’ that my mom had. The care was simply not good enough for my mom. Moving to Highgate has been a complete blessing for my mom. The care partners are always person-centered. They do a great job of redirecting Mom’s behavior with kind words and encouragement rather than getting angry.”
Adds Steve, whose wife lives at Highgate at Yakima: “The staff and the supervisors are competent, caring, compassionate, and considerate. When they walk down the hall or they walk past a patient or even each other, they acknowledge each other. To me, that shows that this is a family.”
If you want your aging parent to get more comfortable with the idea of moving to an assisted living community, consider a short-term respite stay. Many assisted living communities offer the option for a stay overnight, for a few days, weeks, or months.
Short-term respite stay residents enjoy all the benefits of assisted living, allowing them to test the waters of community living, and caregivers get a much-needed break, as well as time to make important decisions.
“Even if it’s only for two weeks, you have got to be able to step out of the caregiver role and get back to being a husband,” Steve says. “It gave me, as the husband, a chance to step back and not be worried about Paula all the time and to get a good clear view of what needed to happen.”
The biggest piece of advice Shelia has for other family caregivers? Don’t wait.
“I wish we would have done it sooner,” she says.
Making decisions about senior living with aging parents isn’t easy, but there are a lot of resources out there that can help. For more tips for making the move to assisted living, download our eBook The Start of a New Chapter, a guide to making the move to Highgate Senior Living.