Keeping Eyes and Ears on Your Parents' Home Care

Monitoring your parents’ in-home care is essential to ensuring they receive the best possible assistance, yet it can be challenging while balancing the demands of your own life, family, and career.
Monitoring your parents’ in-home care is essential to ensuring they receive the best possible assistance, yet it can be challenging while balancing the demands of your own life, family, and career.
Geriatric Care Managers are specialists who help older adults and their families navigate the physical, emotional, and social challenges that are difficult to manage alone.
Few things test sibling relationships more than when the time comes to actively manage the lives of their aging parents. Irreparable damage to once-close relationships is too often the norm as brothers and sisters clash over what each believes to be best for mom and dad.
If you’ve ever watched a crime drama, this scene is probably familiar. A beat cop hustles a criminal into the police station for booking. The intake officer records his name, takes a mug shot, tells him to empty his pockets—and then asks for his Social Security number. Right?
Wrong. As every crime drama from Hill Street Blues to CSI has taught us, when someone is arrested for a crime, it’s the fingerprint that links them to it forever. So why do some home care agencies rely only on Social Security numbers when screening caregivers?
Is your senior safe from financial abuse? You might be surprised. A report by elder financial services firm True Link Financial reveals that the extent of senior financial abuse is much greater than previously reported. Approximately 36.9% of Americans over age 65 are affected in a given 5-year period—at a cost of $36.5 billion a year.
Two of the biggest advantages of hiring a private caregiver are control and choice. You and your caregiver simply agree to the terms of work – including services, hours, and pay rate – and get started. If the two of you can’t agree, you look for someone else.
Perhaps your mom is having surgery next week in New York, but you live in L.A. How will you make sure she’ll get the right home care upon discharge from the hospital? And what about the high cost of your dad’s caregiver from an agency? Every month there’s another bill, and his savings seem like they’re going right out the door. Should you find more affordable help?
Finding care for your aging parent is a huge responsibility, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Can your mom age in place, or do you need to consider a residential facility? Should you hire a private caregiver or a licensed home health aide? How will you finance care?
Myth #1: Medicare covers the cost of home care. Neither Medicare nor Medicare supplements or other private health insurance plans cover non-medical home care. Medicare will cover short-term, intermittent care services in the home through a licensed agency...
As Americans gather at home to start the winter holiday season this Thanksgiving, we’d like to share the story of an organization that builds homes for disabled veterans so they, too, can more easily gather at home with friends and family.
My mom needs help with putting in eyedrops. Does this mean I need a registered nurse or a senior caregiver? My dad has a Hoyer lift to transfer him out of bed. Should I find someone skilled or can a strong companion help him?
With Alzheimer's disease currently affecting more than 6.5 million Americans, each fall the Alzheimer's Association seeks to raise awareness and fund a cure with the international Walk to End Alzheimer's.