What is Elderly Care?
Elderly care or elder home care services mainly include assisting senior citizens in their daily tasks like cooking or taking meals, medications, housekeeping, and other activities of everyday life. Advanced elderly home care also includes licensed nursing services, scheduled transportation, and social and entertainment activities. There are numerous ways a caregiver can be a source of support for senior citizens and can improve their quality of life.
Elderly home care proves to be very beneficial for senior citizens and allows them to:
- Enjoy familiar surroundings and personal comfort.
- Maintain independence.
- Create a safe environment.
- Prevent loneliness.
- Ensure health & well-being.
- Give them personalised attention.
That’s why it is important for senior citizens to consider having elderly care services in order to live their lives at home with peace and maintained health. Aging at home improves and extends the overall quality of life by postponing institutionalization and preventing premature decline. By encouraging self-care and independence, aging people can stay in charge of their own lives for prolonged periods.
1. Try To Get The Elderly Involved In Different Activities:
In old age, when people choose to spend their lives at home, there is a high risk of isolation and loneliness. That’s why it is important that seniors stay involved in social activities and spend time with their friends or loved ones. Elderly care support can make sure to engage seniors in social activities in order to eliminate their loneliness.
Caregivers can also help them get a membership at a book club, gardening club or any other club of their choice. Home care assistance should also keep the senior citizens involved in simple things like playing board games or sightseeing. These activities prove to be beneficial for their mental as well as physical health.
2. Identify Coping Mechanisms of the Elderly And Support Them In Accessing Them:
The elderly care assistants should also identify the coping mechanisms of elderly people and should support them in assessing them. Everyone has different ways of alleviating stress. Some people like to go on long walks; some like to listen to music, meditate, and pray.
The caregivers should also help find new interests or coping mechanisms for the elderly people if they get bored from the previous ones or those hobbies are difficult to access. For example, if a long walk is not possible for a person due to their physical conditions, try to find ways to bring the outdoors inside, and help them to stay in movement.
3. Introduce Senior Citizens To Technology:
Nowadays, technology holds great significance in our lives. Introducing technology to seniors can benefit them in several ways and help them be independent. After learning about technological devices, they can order groceries and other essential items on their own when they are unable to go to the store. Moreover, they can also keep in touch with their family and friends through social media. Through technology, they can also take online classes and learn new things which they find interesting or useful.
4. Arrange A Comfortable And Secure Means Of Transportation:
Generally, many seniors do not prefer to go out and miss many social events because they do not feel comfortable driving. That’s why caregivers should arrange regular and secure means of transportation that will help them feel safe during outings. In such a way, elderly people can get more engaged in outside activities, which would certainly improve their quality of life.
5. Provide Recreational Therapy To Elderly People:
Recreational therapy can bring a lot of positive changes in elderly people’s lives. That’s why recreational therapy is sometimes referred to as therapeutic recreation. It generally involves using recreational activities to maintain, restore or enhance an individual’s social, physical, cognitive and emotional functioning. The recreational activities usually include trivia games, painting, playing musical instruments, etc.
Such activities, in addition to uplifting the mood of elderly people, also help improve their agility, mobility, joint flexibility, and balance. A study has shown that light exercise also positively affects conditions such as osteoporosis, diabetes, hypertension and various mental illnesses.
6. Provide Medication Management:
One of the most significant ways through which you can improve the health of elderly people is to ensure the proper intake of their medications. The home care assistants, in addition to providing the elderly people’s medications regularly, should also measure their vital signs and keep a check on them. So that they can get immediate treatment or care in case of an emergency.
7. Assist Senior Citizens In Meal Preparations:
The elderly care assistants should make sure that the elderly people are consuming their meals properly and on time. The caregivers should help them to get a well-balanced and well-nutritional diet to maintain their health. The assistance in meal preparations may include things like running errands for them, labelling every food item, discarding things that are close to the expiry date from the pantry, motivating elderly people to have their meals and sometimes cooking for them.
8. Try To Help Them To Get Proper Sleep At Night:
Good and enough sleep at night is very necessary for our body’s normal functioning. The caregivers should help the senior citizens to get a good sleep at night. Elderly care assistants should ensure that senior citizens have a peaceful, comfortable and relaxed environment that can help them in their sleeping patterns.
9. Help Them With Their Laundry:
The main motive of home care aides is to improve the quality of life of elderly people. Seniors with physical limitations are unable to perform their domestic chores. That’s why they depend on caregivers for help.
Elderly care assistants provide a wide range of services other than light housekeeping, such as meal preps, grooming, assistance in laundry and companionship, which helps combat their loneliness or depression and effectively improve their quality of life.
Moreover, tackling laundry is a helpful way to get things organised for elderly people. Studies have shown that organisations can help people of all ages improve their well-being and overall health.
10. Be A Source of Consistency For Seniors:
Consistency is really important for people with physical limitations or memory loss issues. Home care assistants should anchor and support consistent routines for elderly people. Because having a proper routine makes life easier by reducing stress or anxiety, enhancing sleep quality, and helping people feel safe and secure.
Moreover, having a consistent routine also makes it easier to remember the necessary things like taking medicine, using the bathroom, eating, and drinking water. That’s why caregivers should pre-plan the schedules of senior citizens’ lives and should help them to stick to their regular routines.