When the years of a working life are over and it is time to retire, a lot of decisions must be made about what the best course of action is. For some seniors, the best thing is to move into the home of one of their children. For others, they need the amount of care that can only be found at a nursing home.
But for some people, the best place to spend their golden years is in one of the many assisted living retirement communities. These kinds of facilities offer a great balance between complete independence and skilled nursing care that is available in a nursing or rest home.
When a baby boomer moves to an assisted living facility, an initial assessment of medical and personal needs is completed and a care plan is created. This plan ensures that the care that is need by an individual is given at the right time, in the right place, by the right person, in the right way.
The folks who staff these facilities are top notch elder care professionals. They have had the best training available and are indeed specialists in providing care to elderly residents. It used to be that the only kind of facility available was a nursing home. And the horror stories you heard about those were frightening indeed.
Those were just stories, of course, but if you were involved in a situation where you were responsible for a senior and what they needed was a nursing home, the guilt you felt was almost overwhelming. That is one of the many reason why assisted living retirement communities were developed.
Many retired people do actually need some help in managing their medications, or with a bit of physical therapy or some other daily living activities, and it is in the assisted living facilities that they can get a program that is tailored to their particular needs. It is no longer, "one size fits all" kind of care, in a great assisted facility, the individual is paramount.
Even better, is the philosophy of the assisted living places, that there is no reason to give anyone care that they do not need. This was a problem in a nursing home, where everybody got total care even if they did not need it. And that kind of care more often than not created a set of people who wound up completely dependent on their caregivers. And that is never a good thing, if you don't need that kind of care.
Assisted living retirement communities are a great blend of enough individual help, without an overwhelming amount of assistance. They are a great middle ground for many people, and they might serve your needs perfectly.
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