Caregiving – How To Keep Parents At Home For As Long As Possible
Many caregivers are dedicated to their jobs because they want to keep the elderly at home as long as possible. Most people often swear they would never put their dads or homes in assisted living homes. On the other hand, assisted living is quite expensive.
As long as there’s no risk for everyone involved, keeping the elderly at home is actually a good thing. However, caregiving is actually a very tough and stressful job. It’s quite common for caregivers to get burned out and often develop serious health issues because of the stress of their job.
If you want to start caring for your older adult, you need to start pacing yourself to make sure you’re not getting stressed yourself. Here are some useful tips to help you in your caregiving duties and reduce your stress to keep your parents at home for the longest time possible.
1. Understand The Amount Of Care Required
Most caregivers often handle too many tasks at once such that it’s tough to look at the whole picture. If you need to understand the amount of care required by the older adult, you need to make a list of all the duties you’re handling. Does the senior adult require assistance during the day or at night? Do you need to provide constant supervision at all times? You can jot down every task you do on a notepad. In a few days, you will have a complete overview of everything your senior requires and the specific times of day they need assistance.
2. Be Realistic About The Care You Can Provide Without Posing Harm To Yourself
Once you have everything written down, you need to be realistic. How much care can you provide to the senior without posing any harm to yourself? You will notice a mismatch and eventually, you will be burned out if you’re providing too much then you can actually do.
3. Ask For Caregiving Assistance When You Need It
If you want to reduce the workload and the stress of doing it, you need to ask for assistance whenever you need it according to Austin home health providers, Heavenly Care Givers. Of course, it might be a tough thing to do but you need to do it if you want to be a helpful caregiver. It’s prudent to find the best ways to save time and handle your caregiving tasks accordingly. You need some patience, creative thinking, and effort for the best results but you when you can afford regular breaks, everything will be worth it.
Some ideas you should consider include the following.
- You can ask for assistance from your regular members to provide assistance on a regular schedule. They can handle some of the caregiving duties but if they are not capable of doing the personal care tasks, they can handle finances, chores, errands and insurance claims.
- Enroll the senior in an adult day program. Here they can socialize and find other people to take good care of them while you get the much-needed help.
- You can always hire caregiving help that works in-house.
- Try automating as many errands as possible because anything that will save both time and energy will be worthwhile.
- Try using a respite care service.
- Check for volunteer senior companion programs available in your areas.
4. Share The Responsibility Of Caregiving With Someone Else
There’s a chance you might be doing the best job as a caregiver such that nobody assumes you need any help. Ask your siblings and close relatives to take the share on the responsibilities to get as much break as you need.
If your family is sharing the responsibility such as moving your mom to your sibling’s house for a few years, taking turns with another sibling to live in with your dad or having yet another sibling to stay in your house for a week every once in a while, you will be able to get away.
5. Reduce The Financial Pressure
Keep in mind that caring for a senior adult will be expensive and will cause a huge financial burden. If you can reduce the costs, you will reduce the financial pressure associated with your caregiving job.
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