Question

The elderly make up one of the fastest growing populations in the United States and require specialized care due to the physical and mental health issues they face in later years. Long-term-care facilities to assist with their care are growing, and resulting concerns about the facilities providing professional and nonviolent care are growing as well. Refer to your text and to individual research. Suggest which alternative for elder care you believe is better: (a) home-based care or (b) long-term-care facilities, and why. Compare and contrast the two alternatives in your response and focus on reduction of elder abuse as your main concern.

Answer 1

Many older Americans choose to move into some form of senior housing. But each year more and more choose to stay in their homes. It’s not a black-and-white choice, and whatever arrangement you choose, home care can dramatically expand your options.

For many these days, the ideal approach to aging involves aging in place—staying in your home and taking the steps necessary to remain independent for as long as possible. Many are still choosing the better-known options: retirement communities, assisted living facilities, and other institutions designed to care for older people. But an increasing number of seniors are choosing to stay at home and get whatever help they need to remain there.

Aging at home comes with all the same challenges: Health and mobility issues present threats to independence wherever you live. But home care agencies—which provide all the services that come with an assisted living facility, but do so in the client’s own home—can enable a senior to remain at home throughout the aging process, and at a cost comparable to other options.

Because many seniors choose to age in place because of their emotional attachment to a particular home or community, home care can also give loved ones the reassurance that their family members are being well cared for without forcing seniors into an unfamiliar, and possibly distressing, environment—and home care can, if needed, keep seniors at home all the way through the end of life. What’s more, home care can also expand the range of options available to any senior, allowing them to choose to stay at home—or seek care outside of it—as best suits their situation.

Kinds of Care

Before we talk about choosing between home care and out-of-home care, we should probably talk about the types of care available to people looking for help as they age. Roughly speaking, they fall into two main categories: the types of care you can receive in your home, and the types you can only receive by leaving home.

In-Home Care

There are various kinds of help that someone can receive at home:

Strictly speaking, “home care” covers two main types of non-medical care delivered in the client’s home: help with activities of daily living (things like bathing, eating, keeping track of medications, and mobility) and instrumental activities of daily living (essential tasks that aren’t directly related to physical needs, like preparing meals, light housekeeping, and other household chores). Many home care companies will separate these two categories into personal care and companion care or housekeeping.

Home care is often thought of as something that’s provided for the long haul. Recovery care, on the other hand, involves all the same services as home care, but is provided on a temporary basis for someone dealing with an acute issue such as recovery from a surgery or an injury.

Care Outside Of The Home:

Senior Living

Senior living isn’t really a form of care, or even of institutionalization. In senior living, fully able older adults who just want to let go of the responsibilities of living alone will sometimes move into a retirement community or senior housing community. This type of housing is usually designed specifically to be used by seniors, and can take the form of apartments, condominiums, or even freestanding homes. Such living arrangements almost never include the types of services covered by home care, though the communities may, by design, make life easier in general for the aged.

Assisted Living

Assisted living facilities provide room and board and some assistance with activities of daily living. But while “assisted living” is sometimes used as a catch-all for any senior housing that includes some kind of personal care, such facilities may not have medical professionals on staff in the way they would be at a nursing home.

Choosing the Right Care For You

Talking about different types of care in the abstract, however, doesn’t make it any easier to figure out whether you should age in place or enter one of the various types of facilities that offer care. That’s because every person’s situation is unique, and every person has unique needs and motives as they choose the type of care they want.

One situation that often arises is a healthy senior who lives fairly independently who nevertheless feels that they need some help. This can range from organization or home maintenance to ordinary household chores, like cleaning or laundry, that the client wants to take a rest from after a lifetime of work.

Home care—in particular the lower-level type of care often referred to as companion care—is probably the best bet in this situation: if everything else is going well, why leave home for a facility? Home care can also offer some additional advantages, depending on the situation: for example, if the senior is far from loved ones, the caregiver can give the family updates on the client’s condition, and provide reassurance that might not otherwise be available.