How Motion for Wellness Can Help
Motion for Wellness can be part of your team by helping maintain personal safety at home, supporting caregivers, and facilitating a smooth transition to the right senior living setting.
Caregiver Resources
Self-Care Tips for Caregivers
Remember: caregiving is hard to do. Taking care of yourself matters.
Everyday Self-Care
- Find or expand a hobby, such as gardening or painting.
- Hire help a few days a week so you can leave the home.
- Keep your doctor and dentist appointments.
- Set relaxation times for yourself, and keep them.
- Prioritize your own care needs, such as nutritious meals.
- Let go of unrealistic expectations, like a perfect house and yard.
- Declutter your environment, including turning down a TV that is too loud.
- Science has shown that when you focus on the good, your brain starts seeing the good.
Getting Support and Asking Questions
- Don’t get stuck in information gathering. Pick a place to start, and start.
- Appreciate all those who offer to help and remember: they do want to help! Everyone loves to be needed. If no one needed help, how could we help others? It is hard to say you need help, but that doesn’t make it wrong to ask.
- Ask professionals questions. Sometimes professionals don’t realize how much they really know and assume others know what they do. Learn to ask and listen, and write things down.
- Don’t try to sort through all the options by yourself. Ask a professional or someone you trust for help.
- Ask around, many people know of services you may not have found.
Helpful Community and Professional Resources
- County Senior Services, Senior Centers, Environment & Home Safety Programs, the Long-Term Care Ombudsman, and the National Institute on Aging.
- Your Area Agency on Aging can provide information on many subjects.
- There are support groups, and some allow your loved one to come along.
- Asking your physician for a visiting nurse, as warranted, can help relieve fear and stress.
- Visiting physical and occupational therapy can help keep your loved one safe.
Signs More Help May Be Needed
These signs may mean your senior loved one needs more help, whether from a caregiver or through a move to senior living:
- Changes in cleanliness, both personally and in the home.
- Delays in home maintenance: burned-out bulbs, skipped vacuuming, dirty dishes, or old food.
- Forgetting medication, or taking the wrong dose at the wrong times.
- Expressing loneliness or fear.
Understanding Senior Living Options
Independent livings offer meals, activities, an apartment-like environment, daily safety checks, and companionship. Many independent living communities also offer third-party caregiving.
Memory care is an environment designed to help keep loved ones safe and prevent elopement (wandering away). Programs are tailored to the needs of seniors with dementia.
Assisted living can provide medication management, dressing and bathing assistance, as well as three balanced meals daily and companionship.
Paying for Senior Living or Caregiving
- Life insurance: many policies can be cashed out early.
- Veterans Aid and Attendance Benefit.
- Long-term care insurance.
What Seniors Often Say After Moving
Many seniors who move from their home into a senior living community say things like, “I feel more like myself,” “There’s always something fun to do,” and “I’m eating more than I used to.” Seniors also report being more active in a senior living community than they were at home.