When to Start Looking for Care for Your Loved One

Signs That Your Loved One May Need Care and Support

Watch for these signs:

• Physical inability to perform household tasks they have done throughout their adult lives.
• Forgetfulness or other cognitive changes that are abnormal for your loved one and interfere with their well-being.
• Signs of malnutrition or dehydration as a result of the above.
• A need for extra oversight at home and in the community, and a need for an advocate, because they are unable to speak for themselves for various reasons.
• Struggles with personal care.
• Self-inflicted physical harm, with or without their knowledge.
• Loneliness. With age, due to health conditions and the social restrictions that come with physical limitations, we lose parts of our lives. We forget things, and sometimes we don’t understand our loved ones. We become disconnected from family and often from friends, because it gets harder to leave home alone or to hear friends on the phone. We lose the emotional support everyone needs to feel part of life, and loneliness often becomes a slippery slope to sadness and depression.
• Fear of leaving home alone and physical difficulty moving around, with or without a cane or walker.

There may be other signs that your parent, aunt, uncle, grandparent, or another relative or friend needs extra support. Usually it is something atypical for them: something new that worries you, even if you can’t say why.

How to Prepare Before You Search

Before you start looking for a caregiving agency or a freelance caregiver, prepare for your meeting with them:

• List the needs. Take some time to note what your loved one needs support with, as well as the things you absolutely cannot do by yourself any longer.
• Define the extent of support. How often do they need help, and how many hours a day? It could be 2 hours a week or 24 hours a day. They may need help only with cooking (because of physical limitations), or they may need the full range of services covering ADLs and IADLs. See my post: “What to Do When You Realize You Need Support with Activities of Daily Living and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living.”
• Contact their insurance. Reach out to their medical insurance and/or Long-Term Care insurance, if they have it. The insurer may cover in-home care services.

Why This Matters

By putting together a list of the challenges you or your loved one are experiencing, along with their needs and preferences, you can identify:

• WHAT KIND of help you need
• HOW OFTEN you need it
• WHO you need to hire

Depending on the situation, that could be a caregiver, a nurse, an assisted living facility, a nursing facility, a rehab center, or an adult family home.

This is also the first step in drafting your Care Plan, which you need no matter which services you choose.