Caring for an Elderly Father: Senior Community or Home Care?
With your parents getting old, it becomes your responsibility to take proper care of them, not necessarily because of the obligation of them being your parents but because you know you love them as they love you. You can think about accommodating various facilities required for their old age or arranging for their stay at a senior community.
Usually the elderly want to continue staying at their own place. However, you must ask a few questions to yourself before coming to a conclusion about their stay.
- Are your parents healthy enough in their old age to live at home?
- Do you have the proper experience in handling old age people in case of a medical fatality?
- Can you afford home service for every possible need?
Well, before answering, let’s compare home care with senior facility point-to-point and see what’s better:
Companionship
Usually, at old age, people run out of companionship. They need someone to talk to, to express their feelings, to spend time. It is an obvious fact that you can’t always be available to your parents for leisure or even caring purpose if you are working. If you think that your home is the right place where your parents can get a proper company, then home care would be the ideal choice for them.
However, if your parents lack companionship, you can think of suggesting them for an assisted living. A senior community provides the elderly with the company they need. If your parents live in an environment with the people of their age, they would naturally feel better about themselves.
Safety and Security
Old people become more vulnerable to medical issues as their age progresses. Although it feels safe at home, your home could lack the infrastructure available to deal with such situations even after accommodating home care facilities. Well, this is not the case with assisted senior community, as you get most of the necessary infrastructures required to deal with fatal incidents. The security personnel at assisted living centers are also well-equipped to handle those people.
A Well-Framed Routine
At memory care assisted living, the elderly follow specific routines which the centers frame specifically for them so that they get the feel of living a well-organized and healthy life. Following all these in-home care becomes tough, and you would have to hire a nun or a keeper to handle your parents.
Affordability
If you try to accommodate all the necessary facilities in your own home for a smooth home care service, it would cost you way more than it would at a regular senior community. Forbes, in one of its reports in 2017 says that medical expenses comprise 35% of the regular revenues. With such a high inflation rate in medical facilities, isn’t it too expensive to arrange for everything at home?
These expenses occur due to the fact that these expenses assist an individual. Similarly, the cost at a senior community is low because the expense is granted over several people at once. Moreover, as said above, you can’t equip your home with anything and everything at once!
Love is more about caring for each other. Your love for your father will not change with his stay in one of these elderly assistance homes. What matters is, what’s best for him. You can’t pay back your parents for how much they did for you, but you can surely express your gratitude. So, gift your father peace, calmness, and comfort in his old age.
Author: Charlie Brown