We understand that it can be a difficult process to have our loved ones move into retirement homes. However, retirement homes offer a wide range of benefits for seniors — including social and communal opportunities, safety and security, additional assistance on-hand and more.
However, the biggest question of all is: what do seniors want in a retirement home? Let’s examine some of their benefits below, before reviewing which next steps you should take once your loved one moves into a retirement home.
Moving your loved one into a dedicated retirement home can open the door to a wide range of benefits for their mental, emotional and physical well-being. Some of these benefits include:
The opportunity for social engagement is perhaps one of the most notable benefits of moving a loved one into an elderly retirement home. Given that social activities become much more infrequent with age and regular mobility can become much more difficult for them to deal with, seniors become far more susceptible to loneliness and alienation from social life.
Instead of constantly worrying if your loved one is getting the right amount of social engagement at home, Tea and Toast can help them find an ideal living space that is equipped with the right social programs and services.
Many retirement homes provide social spaces, organized community events and other activities that facilitate social interaction, providing seniors with the opportunity to participate in engaging and enjoyable activities. Moving your loved one into a retirement home is a great way to allow them to make new friends, stay busy, improve their mental health and reduce their chances of feeling isolated.
In some cases, making your home secure for your loved one can require making modifications to the current setup in your home. Oftentimes, these modifications don’t come cheap and can add up in the long run.
Retirement homes, on the other hand, are built with safety and security measures that take seniors’ mobility and accessibility requirements into account. The size of an average seniors retirement home usually accommodates special accessibility services (such as ramps and wider elevators), as well as the availability of ample medical staff and assistance.
Believe it or not, moving your loved one to a retirement home is a great way to help them create room for growth and personal development in their lives. Personal growth and development is important at any age.
Given that retirement homes are managed by additional staff and support, this can eliminate the need to worry about caring for a house, overseeing monthly expenses or other responsibilities that can become increasingly stressful and difficult to deal with in older age.
As a result, moving to a retirement home can provide seniors with more time to pursue the dreams, skills and hobbies that they may have put on hold in the past.
Now that we’ve outlined some ways in which retirement homes are a great option for seniors, what do you do after your loved ones move into one?
Your loved one moving into a retirement home does not signify the end of your relationship with them. On the contrary, the move can allow you to be intentional about your relationship going forward.
The first thing to take care of is visitation. Plan on how often you will be making a visit to the home and how you plan to spend time with them. To make this easy and to ensure that you stick to this plan, it is a great idea for you to create a visitor calendar.
A visitor calendar can help you monitor how often you visit, plan your number of visits, space out your visitation and also serve as a reminder for future visits.
Another great way to keep the bond strong is to involve yourself in resident activities. At Tea and Toast, we can suggest retirement homes with great services for seniors in retirement homes, all while considering the particular needs, interests and preferences of your loved one.
This can also be combined with the first step. You can plan your visitations to coincide with days that have exciting activities lined up for your loved one. That way, they’ll get to enjoy the event and enjoy your presence as well.
While it’s integral to choose a retirement home that offers your loved ones the opportunity to be social, safe and secure, it’s also essential that you are familiar with the staff that are overseeing the establishment and caring for its residents.
Given that they will be spending a great deal of time around your loved ones, getting acquainted with the staff will allow you to share your concerns and create a line of communication should any issues arise. It’s also a good way to ensure that the staff on-hand are friendly, professional and a reliable resource for your loved ones to turn to for help.
At Tea and Toast, we take great pride in guiding you through the process of looking for a suitable retirement home for your loved one. To learn more about how we can help or to book a meeting, reach out to our team today!
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