A Care Plan for Multiple Needs
Elder Care Helper - Bringing clarity to your elder care choices
by Susan
4y ago
I’ve written a lot about care planning in general. A care plan is a good way to organize, and wherever possible, distribute tasks to ease the burden of caregiving. I’ve covered how to set up a care plan and gave an example of a simplified one. But as we know, life is complex, and many care receivers have multiple needs. Here, I will outline how to set up a more complex care plan. Similar to a simple one, we always start with an assessment in which we identify the needs, preferences and resources of the care receiver. Your planning process must include direct input from the person receiving car ..read more
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A Family Care Plan
Elder Care Helper - Bringing clarity to your elder care choices
by Elder Care Helper
4y ago
In my prior post I talked about the factors to consider when developing a care plan: needs, preferences, personal and community resources. Now we can start to put together the actual care plan keeping those concepts in mind and reminding ourselves that the goal of a good care plan is to promote the highest quality of life possible. The care plan I think is most useful consists of 5 parts. The care plan states the problems The care plan identifies the goals The care plan lists the solution(s) to address each problem The care plan identifies the person(s) responsible for seeing that each probl ..read more
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Your Care Plan
Elder Care Helper - Bringing clarity to your elder care choices
by Elder Care Helper
4y ago
A good care plan requires that the person receiving care has given you permission to provide care through consent or advance directives—and it requires that you understand the person and their issues and this understanding is reflected in your assessment. A good care plan leads to a good care giving experience, for you and the person receiving your care. A good care plan helps to ensure that you and the person receiving your care maintain the highest quality of life possible through-out the care giving experience. There are four factors to consider once you are ready to develop the care plan ..read more
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On Becoming a Caregiver
Elder Care Helper - Bringing clarity to your elder care choices
by Elder Care Helper
4y ago
No one plans to become a family caregiver. It happens. Sometimes we become caregivers gradually. Our aging spouse or parent needs help with a few activities, such as grocery shopping, household chores, doctor appointments. As time goes on the need for assistance increases until one day we realize that we are spending many hours a week ‘helping out’. Other times a medical crisis is the precipitating event. There are strategies that you can employ to help you become the best care giver you can be. Professional care managers always begin with an assessment, and there are good reasons why they do ..read more
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Advance Care Directives: Your Quality of Life May Depend on Them
Elder Care Helper - Bringing clarity to your elder care choices
by Elder Care Helper
4y ago
Let’s talk about what happens if you experience a health crisis, are unable to make decisions for yourself, and do not have advance care directives in place. Without guidance from a Living Will, or your designated Health Care Power of Attorney, a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate Order) and/or POLST (Physicians Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment), medical personnel use all available measures to keep you alive. As soon as possible they turn to your next of kin for guidance, your spouse, parents, or adult children. All these steps might be fine with you. However, how would you feel if you were separated ..read more
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Caregiving 101: Knowledge and Preparedness Key to Success
Elder Care Helper - Bringing clarity to your elder care choices
by Elder Care Helper
4y ago
All of us can count on the fact that we will need care giving or be called upon to be a caregiver at some point in our lives. Yet most of us don’t want to think about it. As a result, it takes us by surprise when Dad has a stroke, or Mom breaks a hip, a spouse is diagnosed with cancer or when we learn we have multiple sclerosis—and we find ourselves unprepared. Some are able to scale the care giving learning curve with minimal stress and error. More often than not, however, the lack of preparedness and knowledge creates high levels of tension and results in harm both to the person receiving ca ..read more
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Vertical Families, Overburdened Caregivers.
Elder Care Helper - Bringing clarity to your elder care choices
by Elder Care Helper
4y ago
More than 20 years ago, my mother had a stroke. As her only surviving child, I became her primary caregiver. That choice was one that continues a long tradition of family members taking care of their own, for as long as they can. My choice meant that my mother’s needs became my own, added to the demands and needs of my four children, my husband, my job and myself. Fast-forward to today, and we see that changes in the structure of families are making matters more burdensome for family caregivers. In the past, families were larger. Not only could caregiving tasks be shared, but there were fewer ..read more
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Skilled vs Long-Term Care: Do you know the difference?
Elder Care Helper - Bringing clarity to your elder care choices
by Elder Care Helper
4y ago
When it comes to understanding healthcare people are often confused and misunderstand which services are covered by medical insurance and which are not. This is particularly so when we talk about skilled care and long-term care. It is important to understand the difference between the two because skilled care is covered by medical insurance and long-term care is not. The term “skilled care” refers to services provided by health care professionals such as physicians, nurses, physical, occupational and speech therapists, medical social workers and others. These services can be provided in a hosp ..read more
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Planning For Long-Term Care
Elder Care Helper - Bringing clarity to your elder care choices
by Elder Care Helper
4y ago
In my last post, I wrote about two people who used up their Medicare benefit for in-patient skilled care but were not able to return to an independent life. One ended up opting to stay in a nursing home. The other went home with home health care services, a family caregiver and additional assistance from a home care worker. Neither of these individuals was aware that Medicare coverage for skilled care has a limit—in any given benefit period—and that they would find themselves in need of long-term care services. They also did not realize that Medicare does not pay for long-term care, which resu ..read more
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A Start to Understanding Medicare
Elder Care Helper - Bringing clarity to your elder care choices
by Elder Care Helper
4y ago
Medicare is a national program that provides health insurance for Americans aged 65 and older who have worked and paid into the system. Many people think that if they have Medicare along with Supplemental insurance or a Medicare Advantage plan they do not have to worry about coverage for their health care needs as they age. Others, including me, who read the Medicare booklet that is sent out yearly to all enrollees, think that the 100 days of in-patient skilled care Medicare provides in each benefit period seems like a lot. Who would need more than that? Well, two families that I know are copi ..read more
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