Keeping a senior at home can help him or her adjust to a dementia diagnosis in a familiar environment. While your family feels this is the best decision for your aging loved one, you may be apprehensive about how well everyone can provide care. As you start your new journey in life together, you can use these strategies to provide high-quality at-home dementia care to your loved one.
Start with Realistic Expectations
People tend to have misconceptions about dementia, and it’s possible you’re only just now beginning to learn about the changes your loved one will experience. Try to avoid listening to all the doom and gloom you hear about dementia, since many stories only depict the worst-case scenarios. Seniors with dementia can live normal lives for a long time with the right type of help. However, you must also be realistic about the time and other resources you have available to provide care. In most cases, you can expect to need a team of caregivers who can all rotate shifts as your loved one begins to need more help.
Caring for a senior with dementia can be challenging for family caregivers. Luckily, there is home care Reston families can rely on. Professional dementia caregivers help seniors with dementia stay safe and comfortable at home by preventing wandering, providing cognitive stimulation, and assisting with household chores.
Pay Attention to Room Design
Many of your loved one’s dementia symptoms can be minimized with some careful planning regarding how the house is set up. For instance, people with dementia often do best when there’s contrast between features of a room, such as the walls and doors, that help them identify where they need to go. Your loved one may also benefit from a clutter-free environment, since he or she may not be able to make sense out of multiple knickknacks and other elements of décor. If necessary, you can even highlight important areas of a room. For example, you can put brightly colored tape across the tops of stairs to help your loved one with depth perception.
A professional caregiver with training and expertise in methods of cognitive stimulation can be a wonderful asset for seniors with dementia. Not every senior has the same care needs, which means they don’t all need the same type of senior home care. Families can rely on Assisting Hands Home Care to provide individualized care plans to meet their elderly loved one’s unique care needs. Our caregivers help seniors focus on healthy lifestyle habits such as eating nutritious foods, exercising regularly, and maintaining strong social ties, and we offer mentally stimulating activities that can stave off cognitive decline and delay the onset of dementia.
Secure Dangerous Items
Your loved one may need to be protected from dangerous items he or she might use incorrectly. For example, a senior with severe dementia may mistake laundry detergent for candy or get hurt if he or she tries to use power tools incorrectly. Since your loved one may need to have certain items in the home for caregivers to use when they perform cleaning and household maintenance, it’s best to lock these items up. Find a cabinet in an area of the house your loved one rarely accesses, such as the garage, and store these items behind a locked door.
Plan to Prevent Wandering
One of the biggest hazards for your loved one is the possibility of wandering away from home and getting lost. Wandering behaviors are often preventable by keeping seniors too busy during the day to get bored enough to walk away. You can also arrange for a caregiver to provide overnight care to make sure your loved one doesn’t wake up and leave home out of confusion.
Caring for a loved one with dementia is a challenging task for anyone. The responsibilities may sometimes feel overwhelming, but help is available. Seniors can face a variety of age-related challenges. Though some families choose to take on the caregiving duties, there may come a time when they need a trusted Reston at-home care provider. Families sometimes need respite from their duties so they can focus on their other responsibilities, and some seniors need around-the-clock assistance that their families are not able to provide. Assisting Hands Home Care is here to help. Call us at 703-556-8983 to create a customized in-home care plan.
