Who Will Care For Baby Boomers When They Need Elder Care?

As your parents age, providing them with the best quality of life available becomes a top priority. Although many still thrive and require little assistance well into their 80s, that is not always the case. Starting as early as their 60s, your parents may need assistance with health care and basic daily needs – assistance that you may not have the resources to provide. You may still have your own children at home, or lack the funds, space, time or proximity to personally provide the help. You are not alone. As the Baby Boomers age into senior citizenship, many adult children of seniors are left struggling with a solution to elder care that strikes the right balance for their parents and their lifestyle.

Finding The Right Balance

Making health care decisions with aging parents is a delicate process that requires input from all parties. In many cases, your parent may be reticent to leave the home they have known for many years or be put in an elder care home, despite growing difficulty doing certain tasks alone. For some families, this can create great a great deal of conflict and strife. Often, adult children have no choice but to have a parent move in just as the door swung shut from their own grown children leaving the nest. They may not be physically, mentally and financially up to the task of providing full time in-home care for their parent. This can be especially difficult for older adults caring for older Baby Boomers who, themselves, lack the ability to do strenuous physical tasks often involved in helping a senior.

Navigating Your Choices

It is extremely common for adult children to provide some level of care for their parents, with 17% of people caring for their parents at some point in their old age. This can cause loss of hours of employment and a resulting drop in income, as well as health issues caused by stress. When it’s time to find care for your parents, it’s best to think seriously about their ongoing needs.

• In home care: This can range from help with basic daily tasks such as running errands, unloading the dishwasher and retrieving the mail to 24 hour in home health care with many varying degrees in between. This is an option if your parent’s needs can be accommodated in their existing home.
• Residential care: If your parent cannot be safely accommodated in their home but is fairly healthy and wishes to maintain some degree of independence, a residential care facility like Silverbell Homestead can provide state of the art facilities, activities and meals provided with care by dedicated staffers
• Assisted living: Similar to residential care, this is not a nursing home facility. Residents have their own independent apartments, but dine socially. Health is monitored and most health care takes place on site.

In the unfortunate event that your parent’s needs are too significant to be accommodated by an assisted living facility, there are many caring nursing home facilities that can provide full time comprehensive health care.

Choosing an Option

Only you and your parent can make the right decision for their care. If you’re seeking residential care in Western North Carolina, learn more about the many benefits Silverbell Homestead has to offer. If you’re in need of in home, assisted living or nursing home care, ask trusted friends about their experience and read as many reviews as possible.

It can be difficult to navigate the options when selecting elder care for your senior parents, but shouldering the labor of in home care on your own is something you don’t have to settle for. It is very possible to find the right care for your parents without compromising their – or your – quality of life.