You may be visiting our website if you have an aging loved one with physical and cognitive deficits. While you may be able to care for your elderly loved one at home, you may not have the clinical skills nor financial resources to do so. Our blog posts reveal the physical and cognitive benefits of nursing home and assisted living placement. Your questions and concerns regarding physical, occupational, and speech therapies are addressed here, as well as your concerns about nutritional interventions and social activities offered in nursing homes. After reading our helpful posts, you'll feel more confident in making the right long-term care choice for your senior loved one.
Alice Cox
Senior living advisors are professionals who specialize in helping older people make decisions about their housing and care arrangements. If you need to set up an alternative living arrangement, such as residing in an assisted living community or a nursing home, an advisor can help you make sense of which options match your needs. Here are three things you should know about senior living care advisors.
Independence
One of the main advantages of working with an advisor is that you'll get an independent opinion about how certain potential options might suit your needs. That can be a difference-maker because the team at every community and home in America will try to convince you that they have the best place. In fact, they may be playing it 100% straight with you, but having a great location is not the same as having the best one for you as an individual.
Industry-Specific Knowledge
A lot of terminologies are tossed around the senior living world, and it's important to understand what it all means. Senior living advisors help their clients appreciate the differences between nursing homes and assisted living facilities, for example. They also can help you decide whether your situation calls for a higher level of care, such as skilled nursing, or simple assistance with day-to-day issues.
Note that it's important to look at some of the side issues that come with certain types of care, too. For example, if someone needs medical care, will there be a registered nurse on call 24/7 at the facility? Similarly, folks with potential emergency needs may want to know whether a crash cart will be available.
Reading Contracts
Operators of communities and facilities often make their profits in the little things that appear in the contracts they write. There's nothing wrong with paying for these add-ons if you want them, but you want to be sure you're only paying for what you desire. For example, help with laundry might be a huge benefit for some folks and an option that others will never use. The same goes for things like meal prep, help with organizing pills and use of on-site conveniences like a gym.
It's critical to read the contract with an eye for how folks in the industry write up clauses. What might sound benign to a family member who has never dealt with senior living before could seem a bit excessive to experienced senior living care advisors.