Home Care Seniors, Elderly Care, Companionship - Sonoma County, CA » Stages of Senior Care

Caring for Aging Parents? Woman’s Day quotes Home Instead CEO, Paul Hogan

Julie Ann Anderson — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:46:19 +0000

Once again, our CEO and co-founder of Home Instead Senior Care has been featured in a prominent publication.

This time, Woman’s Day magazine features Paul Hogan in an article entitled, “How to Care for Aging Parents: try these strategies to make helping Mom and Dad less stressful.”

There are literally millions of baby boomers who are caring for their aging parents. If you happen to be one of them, this article contains some helpful advice such as:

Be Prepared
Explore the Options
Think Twice about Relocation
Talk Money
Ask for Help

A elderly parent’s sudden stroke or fall can alter an adult child’s life quickly, so it’s important to have the caregiver conversation when everything is still fine. Use the 40/70 rule, suggests Paul Hogan, coauthor of Stages of Senior Care. When you’re 40 or your parents are 70, talk to them about their preferences.

For additional tips on caring for your aging parent, you can download the 40/70 brochure here: The 40-70 Rule: A Guide to Conversation Starters for Boomers and their Senior Loved Ones.

And for more information about how our Home Instead CAREGivers can help both you and your aging loved one, please call our Sonoma County home care office at 707.586.1516. From our Rohnert Park office, we serve all of Sonoma County including Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Windsor and more.

12 Tips to Choose the Right Nursing Home in Sonoma County, CA

Julie Ann Anderson — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:06:39 +0000

Choosing a nursing home for a loved one is a daunting task. Let Home Instead help make it easier.

For a reasonably healthy senior, a nursing home still is probably not the right choice. But for the senior who truly needs skilled medical care and intense supervision, a nursing home may be exactly the best place to live.

If your elderly parent or loved one – perhaps a mom, dad or aunt — is in the stage of senior care in which they need a nursing home in Sonoma County, there are a few things to remember when choosing one over another. The important thing is to do your research and homework to find the one that best suits your senior’s needs.

Here are 12 things to look for in choosing the right nursing home for your elderly parent or loved one in Sonoma County:

Visit, observe, ask and try
Check ratio of nurses and nursing assistants to residents
Determine staff tenure and turnover
Ask about physician availability: full-time or part-time?
How close is the closest hospital?
Review the most recent oversight-agency survey
Look for activities offered by the facility
Check the food by inviting yourself to meals
Check exercise and entertainment offerings – do residents participate?
Determine if speech and physical therapy services are offered
Consider proximity to family
Understand the cost and financing options

And don’t forget to ask people for referrals. At Home Instead Senior Care of Sonoma, we work with many senior care facilities including independent living, assisted living, retirement homes, retirement communities and nursing homes. Our caregivers provide non-medical care such as companionship services and individual transportation — those are things that nursing and medical care facilities don’t always provide.

Many of the best nursing homes in Sonoma County are staffed with teams of well-trained, professional registered and practical nurses as well as certified nursing assistants. In case of an emergency, physicians and psychiatrists are close at hand to deal with medical crises, which should give you and your family greater peace of mind. So nursing homes continue to serve a very important role on the spectrum or continuum of care for the elderly.

Keep in mind that when people are in a nursing home, companionship is the one thing that is often left out. Our Home Instead CAREGivers often visit our clients to reminisce about the past, to play their favorite game, to read an inspiring book to them and simply to be there on a regular basis when family cannot.

For a free, no-obligation home care consultation, simply call our home care Rohnert Park office at 707.586.1516. Or, if you’d like to view our digital brochure, you can do so at this link: Home Instead Sonoma Digital Brochure. We serve all of Sonoma County including Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Sonoma, Windsor and more.

And remember, “To us, it’s personal.”

Aging in Place: Advantages and disadvantages of seniors continuing to live in their own Sonoma County homes

Julie Ann Anderson — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:43:46 +0000

Home Instead CAREGivers can enable seniors to stay in their own homes and live independently longer through our home care and companionship services.

Aging in place enables seniors to live safely and comfortably in their own Sonoma County homes or other primary residences, including independent living facilities.

This is just one of many senior living options that are covered in detail in Lori and Paul Hogan’s new book: Stages of Senior Care: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Making the Best Decisions.

Aging in place is an option that utilizes some or all of the following: special housing design for seniors, the installation of safety and convenience equipment, and in home care service that enables the senior to remain at home while ensuring needs are met.

The advantages of aging in place are many but we’ll list just a few here:

Aging in Place maintains a familiar environment for the senior or elderly person so that they can continue to live in their own surroundings without making a drastic change
It fosters community continuity, which means the senior can continue to frequent their usual grocery store, drugstore or other places in which they are comfortable shopping and asking for help
It maintains valuable social networks, often keeping contact with neighbors and friends that live nearby
It has a way of strengthening family and family ties
It promotes physical and mental well-being, just be continuing to keep the senior in a home where they often have raised their family

Aging in place can also mean that a senior or a senior couple can move into an independent living facility or other retirement community, such as retirement villages or even a government-funded NORC (naturally occuring retirement community).

Some of the disadvantages of having an elderly loved one continue to live at home or an independent living facility are as follows:

There would likely be a low to moderate investment in home equipment and home modifications. Depending on the home and the ability for the senior(s) to easily navigate in the home, the cost of these modifications an be high depending on the extent and nature of the modifications required, particularly if ADA-compliant renovations are required.
The lead time for renovations may be lengthy (weeks) for determining the need, finding a contractor, and completing these home modifications, especially if the home is outside of a pre-planned senior independent living facility or village environment.
Without home modifications, structural barriers in the home may present challenges and contribute to falls and injuries. Even something as simple as having too much furniture and rugs in the home can make it difficult for the senior to manage easily as they get older.
Seniors may be resistant to home modifications and the installation of helpful technology. Often a senior who has lived in their home for a long time may not want to see any modifications in their home that would signify that they’re getting older and need additional help.

Aging in place is an option that is best suited for seniors who are functional on all activities of daily living (this is often abbreviated as ADL) which includes eating, bathing, toileting, dressing, maintaining continence, and transferring (getting out of a bed or chair). So for those who require limited or no assistance in getting around their home, the prospect is good for sustained independent living and home modifications can be a rather easy and often less-expensive solution depending on their needs and whether they’re living alone or as a couple.

When is it time to move on?

With a few home modifications, many seniors can live in their existing homes for many years without further help. But when it is no longer safe for them to move about easily or if they are forgetting to take medicine or go to doctors appointments, then the situation has to be re-evaluated again. And especially if the need continual nursing or medical help.

This transition time period is often when Home Instead Senior Care can provide senior home care and companionship services that allow the senior to live in their homes or more independent living facilities longer, before having to consider assisted living. When a senior simply needs medication reminders, transportation, light housekeeping, checkbook balancing – or just simply needs someone to be there to play a card game or engage in conversation to prevent loneliness — then that’s a perfect situation for our CAREGivers to lend a helping hand.

Home Instead Senior Care serves seniors across Sonoma County, including Rohnert Park, Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Sebastopol, Windsor and many others. Our offices are conveniently located in Rohnert Park and you can simply call us at 707.586.1516 for a free, no-obligation home care assessment. Let’s work together to allow our Sonoma County seniors to remain safe and live independently in their own homes for as long as they are able.

Fox News’ Road to Retirement: Home Instead provides non-medical care in home as assisted living alternative

Julie Ann Anderson — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:01:53 +0000

Lori & Paul Hogan, co-founders of Home Instead Senior Care and authors of Stages of Senior Care: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Making the Best Decisions

Paul Hogan, the CEO and co-founder of Home Instead Senior Care, was interviewed on Fox News’ Road to Retirement and discusses how in-home caregivers can help keep an elderly loved one in their home longer so that the Senior can retain their independence longer.

And if this is a parent, you know how important it is to them to not feel isolated and to not be with family. But often family members live out of town or simply can’t be there during the day when the elderly person may need the most help to get around.

An excellent guidebook for anyone dealing with the decisions and care needs of a senior or elderly loved one, Stages of Senior Care: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Making the Best Decisions was just released by Paul and Lori Hogan as a way to educate adult children to take care of their parents and have the conversations needed to figure out the best care options.

Today, there are so many choice in senior care and homecare providers that it can often be difficult to make the right choices for your loved one. Check out the video of Paul’s segment on Fox News and you can also download a helpful senior care options guide by clicking here.

Stages of Senior Care will be an invaluable resource for our clients and their adult children to help in planning for all stages of senior care.

Many seniors could stay in their homes longer and live more freely and independently but they often need just a moderate level of assistance on a day-to-day basis. Often that means someone to call them and remind them to take their medicine at a certain time, perhaps provide transportation to a doctor’s office or church, or someone to just check on them personally and provide companionship, reminisce about the past or help them with day-to-day activities, even light housekeeping or meal preparation.

If you are looking for an alternative to assisted living facilities for your Mom or Dad, then consider Home Instead Senior Care of Sonoma County. Simply call us at 707.586.1516 to schedule a free no-obligation assessment of your needs and how we may be able to help your senior live comfortably and independently, often staying right in their own home for years to come. Home Instead also works jointly with independent living and assisted living facilities, including retirement and nursing homes, to provide non-medical care to seniors living in those facilities as well.

Stages of Senior Care: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Making the Best Decisions

Julie Ann Anderson — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:14:50 +0000

Stages of Senior Care will be an invaluable resource for our clients and their adult children to help in planning for the various stages of senior care whether at home, at independent living or assisted living facilities.

The founders of Home Instead Senior Care, Paul & Lori Hogan, have just released their new book entitled: Stages of Senior Care: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Making the Best Decisions. It’s a fabulous resource book and guide to help you navigate through the often challenging maze of the various levels of senior care.

The book is already a USA Today bestseller — debuted at #44 based on combined sales figures of fiction, nonfiction, paperback, hardcover, and e-book titles, through the week ending October 25, 2009.

And here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say in their STARRED review of the book:

“Using their experience running a successful international company providing in-home, non-medical services for seniors, husband-and-wife founders of Home Instead Senior Care offer a helpful guide for families choosing among home care-giving and other assisted-living options for aging or ailing parents. The Hogans believe in helping seniors stay in their homes as long as possible, and knowledge is their most powerful tool in securing that goal; this well-researched volume is packed with information, advice and resources aimed at managing and ameliorating the sadness, confusion, guilt and anxiety of making quality-of-life decisions for a loved one.

“Emphasizing the need for planning, the Hogans offer a list of signs that indicate it’s time to consider additional care, as well as a thorough exploration of the options, including pros and cons, questions to ask and other factors when choosing among home care, senior centers, assisted living and nursing homes. The Hogans also consider options for children who live far away from their parents, and advice on what to do when siblings find themselves in disagreement. Recognizing that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, this salient volume compassionately addresses a full range of hard-to-discuss subjects, including funeral services and bereavement.”

Stages of Senior Care has been endorsed by Dr. Oz, New York Times bestselling coauthor of YOU: The Owner’s Manual: The Complete All-in-One Care Guide as well as Suzanne Mintz, President/CEO of the National Family Caregivers Association.

Here at Home Instead Senior Care of Sonoma County, we feel the book is destined to be a resource book that will be used for years to come. Those who are Boomers or at the tail end of the Boomer generation in their 40s and 50s are certainly beginning to have discussions with their senior parents in their 70s about the various stages of senior care. This guide answers questions and provides ways in which we can talk to our Mom or Dad about those subjects that are respectful, loving and caring.

So if you have questions about how to handle the situation of a senior parent or even grandparent living with you, or if your elderly loved one wants to live independently for as long as possible, you can rest assured knowing that you’ve thought through the issues surrounding those types of scenarios and have also discussed more advanced care needs that are provided by assisted living facilities, retirement or nursing homes and even hospice care.

If you have any questions about the book or are ready to talk to someone personally about your specific situation, please call our Rohnert Park office at 707.586.1516 to schedule a free, no-obligation family senior care assessment. We will provide an objective view of your situation and offer you the various ways in which we can support you in caring for your elderly Mother or Father, or refer you to facilities that can best provide your needs. And sometimes a combination is the best senior care solution.