Does Your Senior Need Help with Their Personal Care Tasks?
The first step in determining if it is time for you to take on a family caregiver role for your elderly loved-one is to detect when they are struggling with particular needs and challenges that indicate that they need more help. Sometimes these signs are subtle and your parent, feeling the need to maintain their independence and resisting the idea to accept help or care, can go to great lengths to conceal that they need this help, making it more difficult for you to be able to detect these needs. One of the times that this is most frequent is when your loved-one needs assistance with personal care tasks.
Senior Care in Winchester City VA: Does your Senior Need Caregiver Help?
For many elderly adults, mobility issues and cognitive challenges can make handling daily personal tasks such as bathing, dressing, grooming, and toileting difficult and even impossible for them to do on their own. In many cases, these are the first real challenges that they face that may require more physical assistance. It can be very emotionally difficult for an elderly adult to admit that they need help with these potentially sensitive tasks, but it is extremely important to their health and well-being that they are managed properly.
Some signs that your aging parent might need help with their personal care tasks include:
• Body odor. Get close to your parent the next time that you are with them and see how they smell. If they have body odor, it might be because they are not bathing as often or as thoroughly as they should be.
• Unkempt hair. If your senior was always conscientious about their appearance but now their hair is dirty, unstyled, too long, or otherwise unkempt, it might be because they are no longer able to care for it properly.
• Wearing the same clothing. A common sign of personal care issues for elderly adults is wearing the same clothing repeatedly. This might mean that they are dealing with cognitive challenges that stop them from understanding the importance of changing their clothing or how to change, but it could also simply mean that they are struggling with their ability to change clothing.
• Dirty bathroom. Some signs that your parent needs help are in the home itself. Check out their bathroom and see if it is clean and well-stocked. A bathroom that smells bad, has a dirty tub or shower, or that does not have the materials that they would need for basic tasks could indicate that they are not following through with these tasks.
What can you do?
If you have noticed that your aging parent has needs that you are not able to handle confidently, or you simply feel that they would benefit from additional support and assistance, now may be the ideal time for you to consider starting care for them.
Having a senior care provider in the home with your parent is an exceptional way to fill any care gaps that might exist in the efforts that you provide, as well as to simply enhance your senior’s life with more support, more companionship, more activity, and greater independence. For them, this means the quality of life that they desire and deserve throughout their later years. For you as their family caregiver, it means having peace of mind knowing that whether you are able to be with them at all times or not, and regardless of your own personal limitations and challenges, your senior is getting everything that they need to stay happy, healthy, safe, and comfortable as they age in place.
If you or an aging loved-one are considering senior care in Winchester City, VA, please contact the caring staff at LivinRite Home Care.
Call Us Today at (703) 634-9991.
Serving Northern Virginia, The Valley, and Surrounding Communities.
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