Care homes aren’t the only option for hospital discharges.
Most people believe that once an elderly person is taken into hospital it is the start of a one way journey to a care home or nursing home and once there, they are never coming home again, but I want to dispel this myth, as it is possible, with careful planning to bring elderly people back to their homes from a care home.
Good care homes do provide excellent support to an elderly person when they leave hospital and they are staffed to provide the high level of care required, particularly for more complex issues. However, once the elderly are “back on their feet” so to speak it is possible for them to leave the care home environment and return home. This will normally require the services of a 24-hour live-in care agency initially where one or more carers stay in the house with the elderly relative. Although it can be disconcerting to have somebody living in the home caring for your elderly relative, with careful planning and choosing the right carer it can be a very successful way of providing care. It should be emphasised that this can be at least as expensive as a care home but there are huge benefits to the person going home. Over time the level of care required can be reduced to a point where a domiciliary care agency can provide the right level of personal care and support, which together with the use of good telecare technology such as pendant alarms, fall monitors and other aids and adaptations as required, will enable your elderly parent or relative to move back home and continue to live their lives independently.
It must be stressed that this isn’t possible in every case, but it is possible in more cases than people realise, provided the time is taken to plan things carefully, the right care providers are chosen, the work they are doing is monitored and sadly in this day and age that the funds are available to pay for the services.
Here at Clarity we have recently done this for a number of our clients who are now happily living back in their own homes and we would be happy to share our experiences and offer our services for finding the right care home, live-in care, domicilliary care and tell you about our monitoring services.
