Are you the caregiver for your elderly family members? Do you feel the stress of taking care of your loved ones? Do you need to take a break but are concerned about your loved one? What you need is respite care.
Find out everything you have to know about respite care today.
Respite Care in General Terms
Respite care is a particular type of care geared towards family caregivers who need a small break. While considering an old family member is a loving, giving, and fulfilling task, it takes its toll. When the family caregiver gets tired, respite care might be the most affordable option for you.
Respite care gives family caregivers their much-needed break. It is mostly temporary but can be a standard or routine option and covers all the family caregiver duties.
What Services Can I Expect from Respite Care?
Everything you do for your parents and any other senior family members is covered in respite care. Here are a few samples of the help respite care gives:
- Medication reminders
- Bathing
- Dressing
- Exercising
- Getting in and out of bed
- Eating or drinking
- Fall prevention
- Light housekeeping
- Cooking
- Transportation
Those are just examples of what respite care can help you with. Now, of course, you or some other family member can do all this for your senior parent. So why would you need respite care?
Family Caregiving Takes its Toll
Caregiving for a family member may quickly become a full-time job. And there is no problem with that. The problem is, caregiving has its costs. It can take its toll both physically and mentally, sometimes even emotionally.
Physical and Mental Toll
Much research shows that caregiving can lead to severe physical and mental health. In some cases, even terrible, chronic conditions may arise. Depression, anxiety, heart and kidney disease, and diabetes have been reported as increased risks involved in caregiving.
As of 2020, only four in ten caregivers diagnosed themselves as having “excellent or perfect” health. It was reported in the Caregiving in the U.S. 2020 report by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC).
Family members who are caregiving for 20 hours a week are reported to suffer from increased depression and other psychological distress. Their self-care is diminished. The more that their loved ones’ health declines, or the more they grow older, the more the health of the family caregiver deteriorates.
The stress associated with caregiving can even cause other problems like emotional problems. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), these emotional problems even last 14 days a month for 15% of caregivers.
And if the elderly person you as a family caregiver are taking care of has dementia, the risks are higher. Caregivers of seniors suffering from dementia are known to suffer greater stress, health problems, and caregiver burnout than caregivers of non-dementia patients.
These statistics should concern you as the family caregiver and the elderly, and the rest of the family. If you get sick, who takes care of the elderly? Another family caregiver? And if that other caregiver gets sick, who then becomes the next caregiver?
The cycle goes on and on, and it’s not even a real solution. What you need is to prevent the caregivers themselves from losing their health. A small break from their caregiving duties is enough to make a big difference.
Family Caregivers Need Rest from Time to Time
A little break from time to time will do a great deal for anyone’s health. These short breaks from time to time will benefit family caregivers, not just themselves but even the elderly they are taking care of.
It does not take one to be a scientist to determine that being physically and mentally unhealthy negatively affects one’s ability to care. Through respite care services, family caregivers can wind down, relax, tend to their personal needs, and re-energize themselves.
With exemplary respite care service, you can be sure that your loved ones are in the right hands. And that you are taking good care of your health, ready to go back into action and take care of your family again. Respite care is a win-win for both you and your family.
Get Respite Care Today!
It is known that family caregivers are not inclined to give up their roles as family caregivers. The survey published by the Senior Care Action Networks (SCAN) back on January 29, 2019, shows that most family caregivers feel like they are abandoning their family when they take a break.
As a family caregiver yourself, you may not be confident about another person taking care of your elderly parents. You may be thinking that no other person can take care of your loved one as you can. But if the stress and the tolls of caregiving are catching up on you, you will not be able to take care of your loved one as well as you used to.
It may be hard to put your loved ones’ welfare in the hands of other caregivers, but the benefits far outweigh your predisposition. You need to take a break to better yourself and your ability to take care of your loved one. The services will not only be instantaneous but will even be long-lasting.
Of all the agencies for the elderly in Orange County, California, none can provide the best respite care than Infinite Love Homecare. We guarantee a worry-free respite care service for you and your loved ones.
With Infinite Love Homecare, you will receive regular updates on how your loved one is doing in our care. Our professional health care provider will be with your family at all times, keeping them company, ensuring their safety, and giving them the best care in Orange County.
Affordable, worry-free respite care is our guarantee.
Contact us for a free consultation at (949) 529-4130 or visit our Contact Us page. For more info on the services we provide, visit our Services webpage.
References:
https://www.cdc.gov/aging/caregiving/caregiver-brief.html
https://watermark.silverchair.com/39-2-177.pdf
