SERVICES
How Can We Help?
We help seniors and their families meet the challenges of aging by:
- Assessing care needs, including physical and mental functioning, life goals and financial resources.
- Developing a care plan with recommendations to meet both immediate care needs and long-term goals.
- Screening, arranging and coordinating in-home support and other types of care.
- Communicating with doctors, nurses, attorneys and financial advisors to ensure needs are met and wishes honored.
- Making referrals to professional experts in the community to help with medical, legal, financial and mental health needs.
- Communicating with family members who live away, keeping them updated and involved.
- Providing emotional support and education to help smooth transitions.
What Do We Offer Families?
Helping a loved one is a humbling experience. As you help your loved one, you think about their
mortality. It can be a deeply emotional time. Helping a loved one is time consuming, as well. You have to manage your own schedule to include time to sort through your loved one’s mail, pay bills, go shopping for groceries, prescriptions and toiletries, and accompany them to medical appointments.
You may need to coordinate care with siblings and friends. Sometimes conflict can occur over the best way to manage your loved one’s care. Fulfilling all of these roles is a loving, rewarding experience, but can wear you down physically and emotionally.
Care Managers Northwest offers professional assistance to help you cope with these challenges. Some services include:
- Family meetings to set realistic, practical goals, to strategize about how to work as a team and to resolve conflicts that may arise.
- Recommendations to prevent burn-out, maintain your health and well-being.
- Individual support to address specific concerns.
- Guidance to help you focus on living with changing and evolving family roles.
When Is It Time?
Most of us don’t want to see any signs of aging in ourselves, let alone talk about concerns and fears about growing older. Most of us don’t even want to think about it. But one day, we will need to face the challenges of aging. In addition to the aches and pains that we experience as we grow older, we may start to notice changes in our hearing, vision and memory.
If it is not us, then it might be an elderly parent or relative who needs help. It could
be your dad who broke his hip and can’t be home alone, or your grandma, the one you promised never to put in a nursing home. She can’t live alone and she can’t live with you. You have work, a family and house. You’re exhausted and taking care of grandma would be near impossible. At one of these times, an aging life consultant can help you. It does not have to be a crisis. It may be, in spite of the desire to be independent, you or your loved one should think about getting help.
Some signs to consider include:
- Increasing immobility and frequent falls
- Inability to maintain personal hygiene
- Forgetting to take medications
- Making excuses for missing doctors’ appointments
- Getting lost on a walk and not being able to find your way back home
- Forgetting to turn off the stove or leaving the keys in the front door
- Not caring the house and yard are not maintained
- Leaving the mail in stacks around the house and forgetting to pay bills
- Cutting off contact with friends, family members and neighbors
- Talking about death and feeling hopeless
A one-time consultation or ongoing care management is available. Contact us by telephone or email when you feel that you or your loved one needs assistance. We will review your situation and schedule a time to meet you and your loved one at home.