Caregiver

By Catherine Walsh, Marketing Communications, Intercity Home Care November is National Alzheimer’s Awareness Month and it’s also National Family Caregivers Month.  As we acknowledge both...

By Micha Shalev There is truth in the statement, “You can never make everyone happy.” If the person you can’t seem to satisfy is the...

By Micha Shalev This is part two of a two-part series. Part one was in the September issue of the Fifty Plus Advocate and can...

Here is the Elder Care Resource Guide for 2016-2017:

Elder Abuse is one of the most overlooked public health hazards in the United States. The National Center on Elder Abuse estimates that between one and two million elderly adults have suffered from some form of elder abuse. The main types of elder abuse are physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional and psychological abuse, neglect and self-neglect, abandonment, and financial exploitation. Elders with dementia are thought to be at greater risk of abuse and neglect than those of the general elderly population.

When life’s challenges include memory loss or dementia, your perceptions, relationships, and priorities inevitably shift. Changes to our sleep patterns naturally occur with aging, but scientists are finding links between changes to sleep and senior memory impairment, cognitive decline, and even dementia. When we get older, we begin to forget things. That’s the common wisdom, anyway, and it’s not far from the truth. It’s long been known that sleep plays a strong role in memory consolidation, but now, research is showing that age-related changes to the sleeping brain disrupt the normal pathways to memory formation, leading to that forgetfulness we associate with growing older.

What does Massachusetts have against spouses? Judging by reactions on Beacon Hill, this is not a “spouse-friendly” state. I have been on a campaign for years now, urging state lawmakers to add spouses to the list of family members who can be paid caregivers. Under Medicaid rules, a person who wants to hire her aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, son, daughter, grandmother or grandfather---can pay them for personal care services at home. But not their husband or their wife.

More than 15 million Americans devote time and energy to caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, but sometimes the cost of caregiving becomes too high. Caregivers find themselves unable to bear the burden of providing home health care without suffering from stress and illness themselves. At that point, it may be time to consider whether to move a loved one into senior care if their health needs become too much to handle at home.

Region – One of the most daunting events that can rock a family is when it is apparent that a beloved elder is in need of help due to a medical, physical or emotional change. Compounding this problem is that one often does not know where to look for support, especially if the elder lives alone or far from family. For anyone facing this situation there is one nonprofit organization, Baypath Elder Care Services, Inc., that can help guide and offer information, resources, and references in a compassionate, supportive way.

There are 40 million Americans, 844,000 in Massachusetts, who help care for aging parents, spouses, or loved ones, helping them to live independently in their own homes. These family caregivers provide unpaid care valued at $11.6 billion annually. Caregivers have a huge responsibility and can take some common sense steps that would make the world of difference to them. That’s why AARP Massachusetts urges passage of The Caregiver Advise, Record, Enable (CARE) Act to better support family caregivers as they help seniors stay safely at home.