Affordable Senior Housing Options Can Provide Wonderful Care

You still remember your father\’s strange ritual when he would go up to to visit his mother, your 98 year old grandmother, in the small town nursing home. Your father was overly annoyed by the unattractive and messy food that someone had spilled just outside the entrance to the care facility. In an act of both defiance and anger, he pulled out his pencil and added a tally mark to the nine that were already on the bottom of the painted white wooden door frame. He turned to you and explained that he was keeping track of how long it took someone to come outside and clean up the mess. You asked your dad if you should go inside, get a bucket of water, and a scrub brush and just clean it up. More angry than before, your dad nearly shouted that it was their job.
The their he referred to was the staff who was caring for his mother, your grandmother, every day. He some how insisted that in addition to the patient care responsibilities the staff had, they should also be monitoring the front porch area and keeping it clean as well. You did not bother to mention that he was defacing the front entrance by his every day pencil marks. It did not seem like a wise comment for you to make. That front porch encounter may have been the first time you began to worry about what kind of care setting your dad would need when he became too old to live independently in his house any more.
Finding Affordable Senior Housing Can be Challenging for Many Families
What are your plans for when you can no longer live in your own home? What are your plans when your parents are no longer able to take care of themselves? Do you have enough money set aside to pay for assisted living facilities, eldercare, or other affordable senior housing?
The most recent studies show that 70% of Americans over the age of 65 will need some form of long term care. And while the most wealthy may have enough assets to stay in a location that meets all of their needs, many families struggle to fins a place that they can even afford, no matte what level of care is offered.
Senior care services have long been a concern of many families. While there may have been a time when aging family members simply moved in with their adult children, the distance between family members and the extended number of years that many Americans live often makes that option impossible. Instead, families often wait to long before having the much needed discussions about where their oldest family members will leave when they need additional care and can no longer live on their own.
Some Very Unique Affordable Senior Housing Options Are Available
A Montessori High School in Omaha, Nebraska, visits a memory care facility one day a week to present their Montessori and other tangible materials to the residents. Nursing home statistics indicate the active participation with familiar objects can create fond memories and calming moments for Alzheimer and other dementia patients. In addition to providing companionship and tactile experiences for the residents, the high school Montessori students also help collect data for a national study about memory care activities. In the Omaha dementia care memory unit, the students conduct field research of how the Montessori Method can help unlock the lost memories of patients with dementia.
And while one school in Omaha sends high school students into an affordable senior housing location, young preschoolers visit residents of a Seattle, Washington, nursing home. Pairing the very young with the very old is what happens when preschool care and education takes place throughout the campus of a 400 person nursing home. Reading favorite stories again and again and singing familiar childhood songs brings smiles to the youngest and the oldest as the young preschoolers infect this nursing home with their boundless energy and unlimited smiles.
No two assisted living centers are the same, and other than offering 24/7 help when needed, few offer exactly the same services. The search then for the perfect spot cannot start too soon.