Why Choose Care at Home Services?
Considering care at home for loved ones can be extremely difficult for all concerned. Most of us want to continue living independently in our own homes for as long as possible. The thought of having to move into a care home fills us with dread and is seen as the last resort, both for ourselves and our families, although the reality is that many live perfectly happily in residential care settings.
The truth is that with the right care at home support, it is perfectly possible to continue living independently at home for a significant period, whether that is by yourself or with your husband, wife, partner, friend or family member.
How can home care help?
The issues that challenge living independently might relate to loneliness, mental health or physical impairment. There might have been a behavioural change, perhaps due to a physiological incident such as a stroke or the impact of a broken hip, or something slower burn, such as the effect of loneliness due to social isolation, longer-term mental illness or the onset of dementia. Dementia can present itself in various ways, including memory loss, change in personality and associated behaviour and cognitive impairment, the latter when an individual starts to struggle with day-to-day tasks such as forgetting how to make a cup of tea.
When there is a concern the first port of call for care at home should be an appointment with the individual’s GP to identify what is the root cause of this change and to ascertain whether a medical and/or social care intervention would be appropriate to help manage those symptoms, to enable the individual to continue living at home. GPs have a responsibility to ensure that an individual is safe to live at home, calling on the relevant support services to intervene as required.
What kind of care at home is available?
Care at home comes in different shapes and sizes, it might be a light-touch one visit a week to help a client to shower and provide some companionship over a cup of coffee, it might be an accompanied visit to a supermarket or garden centre or an ad hoc GP appointment. Or it might be more intensive regular support, helping the client in the morning to get up, washed and dressed, giving them breakfast and setting them up for the day, returning at lunchtime, teatime and bedtime.
As well as personal care support, home care can include housework, doing the laundry, preparing and serving meals, keeping an eye on what’s in the fridge and shopping. And while home care is not about medical intervention it is certainly possible to support clients with their medication, ensuring that prescribed medications are taken in the right way at the right time and making a record of what has or has not been taken, which can be accessed by a medical practitioner if required. This can deliver peace of mind to those who are concerned that their loved ones are not managing with their medication regime.
Companies that offer personal care and assistance with medication are regulated by the Care Quality Commission to ensure professionalism and quality standards are maintained, which in turn offers reassurance to their clients.
Through the support of professional carers, even clients with advanced dementia can continue living in their own homes, either alongside the presence of their spouse or by remote monitoring through CCTV, movement sensors and live microphones and speakers that allow two-way communication, managed by family members.
The individual might live by themselves or with their spouse, who to-date has had sole responsibility of the care of their partner. It might be that the supporting partner is becoming overwhelmed, physically and mentally exhausted, which would be an important trigger for considering engaging home care professionals.
Care at home can take the form of short visits, with little interruption of a client’s routine, night sits when perhaps a client is up and requires support at night time, or 24 hour live-in care with a carer living with a client, all depending on the needs of the individual.
The idea of having someone else in one’s home is off-putting to most of us, but if it means that one can continue to live independently it is a compromise that is worth considering. The reality is that most people soon become used to having care at home and actually look forward to those visits as the carers become familiar and a positive client-carer relationship is established.
The Home Team is a private home care company that supports clients in Norwich and surrounding towns and villages. Established by Peter Shaw in 2020 The Home Team is rated as a Top 20 Home Care Provider in the East of England, according to the client review site homecare.co.uk.
If you’d like to talk about your care at home requirements, please get in touch >>
