It’s never easy to come to terms with having a parent transition from living at home to moving to a senior’s community. The process requires a lot of adjustments, but is an inevitable part of the aging process.

With so many different options, it can be daunting to choose the type of living arrangement that best suits your loved one and their unique circumstances.

What is Independent Living?

Independent Living is perfect for active seniors who are looking for maintenance free living in a safe environment. They would still have access to home care services, but also have access to additional support services such as meal preparation, laundry, housekeeping, and emergency response.

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Adult children who were either born in Canada or who came here at a young age and whose parents came to Canada as adults have some unique challenges. They are in a sense bi-cultural, having grown up surrounded in the home by their parents' originating values and culture while outside the home they are immersed in those of Canada. This dichotomy arises in families of many cultures including Chinese, South Asian, Filipino, Korean, Mexican, South American and others. This month Elder Voice focuses on bi-cultural children caring for aging parents.

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 Looking for the meaning behind the behaviour can dramatically assist caregiver of those with dementia, to determine effective solutions for difficult situations.  This is what Karen Tyrell – Dementia Consultant and Educator from Personalized Dementia Solutions encourages in her workshops and in her book, “Cracking the Dementia Code – Creative Solutions to Cope with Changed Behaviours”.

Here is a story from Karen’s blog to help understand this concept better:

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We recently visited a client who was extremely relieved to have dealt with her own personal Mt. Washmore (her term for describing the mountain of laundry that had previously lodged itself in the center of her living room).  In a previous CRUD blog we excoriated the sheer volume of laundry related products amassed by clients in pursuit of wardrobe maintenance. But piles of unwashed laundry or laundry waiting for folding contribute to the disarray.  People, who have a lot of clothes and not enough time to wash, fold and put them away, find their space compromised by the presence of multiple overflowing baskets stationed anywhere there is an empty surface, including every seat in the house.

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The first steps in finding help on the rollercoaster of caregiving can be the most stressful ones. This month Elder Voice describes sixteen of the most common types of services and support  available.     

There are two main "streams" of help available to caregivers: the public and the private systems. In the public system, services are provided through your local health authority or health unit. In the private system services are available for a fee and not covered by subsidies. There is a much wider range of services available privately if you are able to afford it.

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So often, it seems, the focus on someone with dementia is on what they cannot do. Partly, of course, this is because they need help   to make up for the deficits in  their  abilities-- to wash, bathe, prepare food, even spend time alone. But the challenge is to  remember to look for and pay attention to  what she can do.This is the difference between quality of care and quality of life. This month Elder Voice focuses on ways to help illuminate  potential as much as we do disability.

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“Growing old is not for the faint of heart!” I’m sure that many of us have chuckled over this aphorism. That is, until we are old and experiencing those life altering changes and losses which are so overwhelming. Those annoying aches and pains give over to serious physical health concerns. Our social support network shrinks as family and friends become less available to us through death and incapacity. The opportunity to make new connections diminishes. The meaningful roles which defined our purpose in life, our self-worth, are no longer open to us.

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Mobility problems have serious consequences for seniors, dramatically altering quality of life. Accidents, two-thirds of which are falls, are the fifth largest cause of death in the elderly and can both be caused by, and result in, mobility problems. The following scenarios can answer some of the most common questions.

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Understanding how your body responds to invading organisms can be a huge advantage in eradicating a viral infection and even in preventing a more serious illness that may follow.

The typical response is where you develop a runny nose, watery eyes and maybe even looser stools and vomiting. The goal at this stage is to help the virus to move more quickly out of your body. You may also develop chills as your body tries to increase it’s baseline temperature (fever), this happens in order destroy the virus with heat and to encourage the development and circulation of white blood cells.

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86 year old Susan was a client of ours whose dementia had been progressing steadily over several years. Her caregivers were a set of dedicated, compassionate, gentle and caring people. They were committed to giving her the best quality of life possible, keeping her clean and comfortable, preventing skin breakdowns and infections, and providing her with nutritious food and a variety of stimulating experiences. Despite their skills and caring, at one point Susan started becoming aggressive while they were helping her with personal care, yelling, threatening, grabbing their hands and wrists and not letting go, and more. When she "turned on them" it was a shock.

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On a recent rainy afternoon, we got a call from the sister of a client who lives in one of the best nursing homes in Vancouver. "Peter," it's W," she said in a voice tight with worry. " I'm in T's room. She's gone and nobody knows where she is. She isn't in the building. "A couple of hours later she was found by the police, forty blocks away. Unfortunately, the family of a Vancouver area woman received much sadder news in December, 2013 when she was found dead two days after wandering away from her nursing home. This month, Elder Voice focuses on wandering, a risk for sufferers of dementia whether they are at home or in a facility.

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Most Canadians are aware of the existence of Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSPs) but they really do not know much about how they actually work or how they can use them to benefit them fully.

If you think that an RRSP is that thing you're putting money into to save for retirement, and you think that it's a type of investment like a mutual fund; then you should know that it's simply a saving or investment account with certain tax-saving characteristics.

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