The decision to place a senior in an assisted living facility can be hard. You love the elderly members of your family, but you can’t provide them the care that they need. They need a place to live that is designed to care for the needs of an aging individual. While you know this is true, it can be uncomfortable to trust members of your family to strangers. In order to find a care center that will treat your senior with love, consider the following.
Staffing Ratio
An assisted living facility can have the best intentions, but if they don’t employ enough staff, it won’t be possible for them to attend to every senior’s needs. When touring a facility, ask about their staffing ratio. Make sure that you are specific with your questions. It isn’t such a big deal if they have a lot of servers in the kitchen, it’s much more important that they have enough personal care assistants and nurses. Keep in mind that this ratio will also change depending on the time of day. You want a facility that keeps and adequate staff during the night in case multiple seniors are having troubles at the same time.
Good Design
According to Heartwood Seniors, the design and layout of the facility should have fall prevention features built in to protect their residents. For example, there should be elevator or ramp access between levels. They should also provide walkers or wheelchairs for residents in need. The rooms should also be spacious with plenty of room around the furniture. As humans age, their mobility and coordination will suffer. It can be easy for a senior to bump into furniture in a cramped space and fall.
Pay careful attention to the beds. There should be features available to prevent seniors from falling out of bed in the night. Nothing should be close to the bed that they could hit their head on. There should also be adequate space around the bed for caregivers to attend to a senior in case of an emergency.
Activities
One of the hardest things for seniors living in an assisted living facility is loneliness and boredom. According to Live Better With, social activities are a crucial part of senior care. It is important that you place your loved ones in a facility that will cater to their spiritual and emotional needs as well as their physical ones. Ask to see a calendar of the activities that are offered. Ask if you can speak with current residents of the facility. Ask these residents what they enjoy doing at the care center. Their answers will be invaluable in learning if that is the right place to choose.
Properly caring for a senior is not an easy task. You want to find a facility that takes their responsibility very seriously and treats residents with love and understanding. If you follow the above advice, you should get a good sense of the experience that awaits your loved one. Just be sure to remember to visit often.
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