In-home care for loved ones with dementia is one of the most heart-centered, seamless, and holistic ways to keep individuals in the comfort and familiarity of their homes and communities while providing quality memory care 24 hours a day. The key to high-quality support is working with a licensed homecare agency specializing in memory care.
In addition to keeping spouses, loved ones, and friends connected daily, in-home memory care options honor the wishes of more than 90% of seniors who prefer to live independently in the comfort of their home rather than in an assisted living facility.
Benefits of Professional In-Home Care for Seniors With Dementia
Spouse and family caregivers are unseen heroes, working on the front lines 24 hours a day. However, the consistent and progressive declines associated with dementia require professional intervention.
While it’s smart to begin long-term care conversations early in the diagnosis phase, spouses and families fare best when they enlist the support of in-home dementia care during the transition between early and mid-stage memory loss.
Except how do you find the right caregiver? Maybe you’ll turn to the internet and search for “in-home care for dementia patients near me.” This will likely provide you with a good list of agencies in your area.
Caregiving shifts are flexible, and available on a part-time, full-time, or overnight basis, allowing clients to tailor services as needed and potentially expand services as dementia progresses.
There are multiple benefits of working with a professional home care agency compared with facility-based options.
1. Familiarity With People, Places & Things Prevents Isolation and “Failure to Thrive”
The familiarity and continuity associated with the comfort of home—such as the familiarity of loved ones, neighbors, and friends—plus the security of a regular routine are foundations of the mental and emotional wellbeing of a person with dementia.
A recent scientific journal publication begins, “It is well known that life expectancy in nursing homes is lower for older adults than those residing elsewhere,” and part of this post-transition decline is linked to social isolation and abandonment that leads to “failure to thrive (FTT).”
Providing a way for loved ones with dementia to receive top-quality memory care while remaining embedded in their familiar environments is one of the best gifts we can offer, and it comes with a notably reduced financial cost (see below).
2. Respite Care for Primary Caregivers
Caregiving demands increase daily, resulting in caregiver fatigue that often goes unnoticed until a caregiver experiences burnout. Burnout results in hasty and traumatic decisions that would have been avoided with the addition of regular respite care.
Hiring caregivers to provide regular, short-term respite care gives spouses or children caring for a parent at home the well-deserved breaks required to rest, enjoy regular social outings and engagements, attend to their appointments, and so on.
Respite care services improve quality-of-life for both caregiver and client because their time spent together is less impacted by fatigue-related stress, frustration, anger, or resentment. Professional caregiving agencies also offer longer-term respite care shifts, so primary caregivers have the chance to get away on overnights, long weekends, or extended vacations.
3. Support with Daily Household Tasks
Sometimes, our caregivers stay at home with the client while the spouse or family member gets out and about to run errands, grocery shop, and tend to the household to-do list. In other cases, clients prefer the caregivers to facilitate the daily household tasks, which may include:
- Light housekeeping
- Laundry and linen changes
- Errand running
- Grocery shopping
- Meal preparation
- Medication reminders
- Transportation to and from appointments (personal, medical, social, etc.)
- Pet walking and general care
Services are always customized to the client and household needs.
4. Memory-Friendly Meal Planning and Preparation
Homemade food in small batches is always tastier and more inspiring than mass-produced facility food. Unappetizing diets can lead to seniors undereating and thereby put them at risk for malnourishment. Our caregivers are well-versed in the latest research-driven studies for living well and longer with dementia.
Several diets have been shown to benefit mental clarity, moods, and activity levels for clients with dementia. But equally important is eating a healthy and well-balanced memory-friendly diet, which has proven to slow down memory loss progression.
This includes planning and preparing memory-friendly meals that follow diet recommendations like the MIND diet (Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay). Rather than being bland or boring, these diets are flavorful, rich in colors, textures, and flavors, and easily adapted to clients’ taste preferences and other dietary restrictions.
5. Personal Care & Hygiene Support
As dementia progresses, clients need increasing support to complete daily personal tasks. Examples include getting out of bed in the morning, dressing, bathing, grooming, toileting/incontinence care, and so on.
These routines often involve the physical supporting, lifting, and manipulating clients, which can be challenging for spouses and family caregivers to sustain hourly or daily.
Our caregivers keep dignity at the forefront as they take over personal and hygiene care, providing physical and energetic relief for clients’ loved ones. These services keep our clients feeling like their best selves and ready to meet the day’s planned activities.
In-Home Dementia Care Costs vs. Residential Memory Care Costs
The well-being of spouses, parents, or loved ones with dementia is the top priority. Financial concerns are a close second. Fortunately, full-time in-home dementia care costs are notably less than residential care options.
According to the most recent figures from Genworth, full-time in-home care (based on 40 hours per week) costs an average of $3000 less per month than a shared room in a nursing home or memory care facility. As you begin to explore home care agencies, their representatives can help you find creative ways to pay for long-term in-home dementia care.
Read More: In-Home Dementia Care Costs in California
Learn More About High-Quality Dementia Care in the Inland Empire
Families Choice Home Care should be top of the list if you choose in-home care for your senior with dementia. We have decades of experience providing platinum-caliber home care for clients with dementia. Contact us to learn more about our services.
