Five Crucial Checklist Items When Choosing an Assisted Living Home
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Choosing an assisted living community can feel like an overwhelming decision. If this is for you, you might have certain misconceptions about what assisted living is and does. If it’s for someone else, like your spouse or parent, or grandparent, you may feel some guilt or questions about whether this is the right decision to make for their senior care services.
Senior Care Greenville SC – Five Crucial Checklist Items When Choosing an Assisted Living Home
First and foremost, if this is about somebody else, it’s not your decision. It’s theirs. If they have the cognitive ability to make decisions, it should be theirs. If, on the other hand, they don’t have the cognitive ability to make reasonable decisions or even safe decisions for themselves and their future, that changes things.
However, when you’re looking for the right assisted living community, there are several things to keep in mind. We’ve put together this simple list of five checklist items that you’ll want to cover when investigating the best assisted living community for yourself or someone you care about.
Checklist Item #1: The type of senior care needed.
What does this mean? Well, if the senior requires significant support to get around because of physical limitations, does the staff at the assisted living facility not only have the capacity but the ability to offer that assistance?
If the elderly person has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or another type of dementia, is this a memory care facility that can provide the best support? The type of care a senior will require helps to shape the type of facility and senior care support they should receive.
Checklist Item #2: The design and layout of the facility.
In other words, is it designed and laid out in a way that makes sense for aging people? Or, was it an old apartment building that was converted, with narrow hallways, tight stairwells, and perhaps one or two rickety old, tight, musty elevators that seem to break down all the time?
A modern assisted living facility should be designed with aging seniors in mind, including handrails, support systems, and wide hallways and doorways for wheelchairs, walkers, and other assistive devices.
Checklist Item #3: Is the staff friendly? Does it feel like home?
When an elderly person is moving into an assisted living community, it should feel like home. It shouldn’t feel like a medical facility or someplace where aging people go to be neglected and forgotten.
It should have the buzz of life flowing throughout it. There should be activities, and residents enjoying conversations, games, and other activities with one another. The staff should be friendly and personable, not just to residents, but the visitors as well.
Checklist Item #4: The types of activities available.
Not every assisted living facility is going to provide the same activities for its residents, but they should provide at least some activities to enjoy on a regular basis. Some of these activities may be every other week, once a month, or at a different semi-regular interval.
These could be arts and crafts, music, movies, fitness, trips to local galleries, museums, parks, malls, and much more.
Checklist Item #5: The dining facility.
Eating meals is a vital part of our culture. It’s also crucial for health and vitality. The dining facility should be more like a restaurant than a cafeteria and residents should have some input on what is served from time to time, at the very least.
