Making the decision to move your loved elderly relative into a care home is never an easy thing to do but sometimes it is necessary. Let us take a look.
In the Beginning
Caring duties often begin with something innocuous like running Grandma to the doctors, or getting some shopping in for her. Over time, these duties can increase to include assistance with household tasks, minor physical care like toenail clipping or dressing changes on cooking burns or paper cuts. These tasks are usually done during visits, and don’t really take up a lot of your time or attention.
Progression of Decline
But as more time passes, the demands become more insistent and you might begin to feel out of your depth. Perhaps your relative is becoming bruised more often for no discernible reason, their minor injuries don’t heal as cleanly or as quickly as previously, or they don’t seem quite as cognitively sharp as before.
Before you know it, you have become a more-or-less fulltime carer for your elderly relative, you feel overwhelmed and out of your depth, but you have no idea how to cope, nor what to do next.
The Next Step: Professional Carers…
The next logical steps, depending on the needs of your elderly loved one, are either to arrange for professional carers to come in once or twice a day, to deal with those needs that you don’t feel capable of handling, or even to assist with things like dressing, bathing and toileting if that has become necessary.
… Or Care Home
The alternative is to scope out care homes to see if you can find one that they will like. Choose a home that is close to your house, so you can visit often without it being a burden, and, if you can, take your elderly relative to visit the care home a few times before he or she moves in. Knowing that your loved one is being cared for from breakfast time until lights out (and in between times, if necessary too!) can be a huge weight off your mind – although, often people who have moved their relatives to care homes find that burden is replaced with an insidious feeling of guilt in its place.
Feel No Guilt!
No one who feels this guilt has taken the decision to place their relative into a care home lightly. It is often only after a long period of increasing demand on the carer’s time and strength that such a decision is considered – and because of
the gradual nature of such declines, it is often well overdue by the time it is considered as a possibility!
When it comes to care homes Somerset is well-supplied, so you will be able to place your relative in clean and comfortable surroundings, and enjoy peace of mind knowing that rather than relying just on you, there is an entire team of well-trained staff ready, willing and able to assure your relative’s comfort and good health – and that really is best for both of you.
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