Chicago Senior Living Advisors Blog
One morning, I received a phone call from the child of two seniors. He lived out of state and was planning a trip to Chicago. The family was at its wits end because the situation at home had become unbearable. His mother had a diagnosis of dementia, but his father was still fully functional and driving. His daughter lived with them and was acting as her grandmother’s caregiver but was planning on starting a higher degree of education this fall. She would not be available to help her grandfather during the day. The members of the immediate family were all working and no one had any time to research any solutions to the problems they were experiencing.
The family explained to me that the woman was getting abusive toward her husband. He didn’t want to place her in a memory unit because there was some support available at home. The cost of senior living presented them with a problem. When I analyzed the situation, they were just spending too much time ay home together and getting on each other’s nerves. The husband complained that she was getting so abusive that he threatened suicide.
Since the family was in opposotion to placing their loved one in assisted living memory care, I had to think quickly for an alternative option. Then I thought about adult day care. The Chicagoland area features numerous exceptional adult day care centers designed to provide therapeutic programming, socialization, and healthcare monitoring for older adults while offering respite for caregivers.
Options range from medical-model programs to specialized dementia care or social models.
I determined that the husband just needed a respite from being with her all the time, so I recommended adult day care in a suburb where he worked previously and loved. This day care center offered a variety of activities that were specifically geared for persons with dementia, including gardening, different sorts of physical movement including dance, brain exercises, and music. The center had a process whereby the family would come and take a tour to determine whether they liked it. Then there would be an assessment of the participant. The husband would be able to participate in some of the activities with his wife. The only thing that the center was adamant about was the commitment to the days his wife would be attending. They did not allow surprise drop ins. Since he could still drive, he could drop her off on the designated days, amuse himself in the area, then pick her up at the end of the day. The cost was about $100.00 per day.
In addition, I researched the senior centers in the area where they lived so they would have something to do on the days she wasn’t in day care. I stopped by each one to collect activity schedules, check out the lunch plans they had available, see if there was adequate and easy parking, and assess whether there was enough staff available to assist the seniors. At several locations, there were 1 to 2 people checking the seniors in. Sometimes there were over 100 seniors participating in the lunch program, which didn’t cost more than five dollars. The menu was always posted in advance. Many of the centers had a nurse on staff. And there were also a lot of resources available on transportation, lectures on health topics and support groups.
In the end, my recommendations kept her out of senior living and avoided world war three.