When your aging parent needs more care than they can get at home, you may find yourself at a crossroads with more questions than answers. You may even still be considering whether you can make some changes and postpone making such a big decision.
The senior living world can be daunting to newcomers, so it’s important to find a trusted partner to help you navigate your options and make the best choice for your family. Understanding the senior living continuum of care and distinctions between levels of care — such as assisted living vs. memory care, for example — will help you feel more confident about making a change that improves your loved one’s quality of life.
Breaking Down the Care Continuum
Senior living communities have changed drastically over the past few decades, and today’s communities offer more personalized care options than their one-size-fits-all predecessors. Some communities focus on a single level, while others offer a complete continuum of care for seniors within the same community, each level supporting older adults’ needs in distinct ways.
A benefit of a community that offers a full continuum of care, which you may hear called a continuing care retirement community (CCRC) or Life Plan community, can be an attractive choice because residents have priority access to additional care if their needs increase or change with time.
While you may find slight variations in the names (e.g., Memory Care instead of Memory Support), following are the common levels of care offered in a Life Plan community:
Independent Living: These residents are fully self-sufficient and need little, if any, support. They take advantage of services such as maintenance-free living and campus dining, but their residence is more about the amenities and lifestyle (and a plan for access to future care).
Assisted Living: Residents in assisted living are still largely independent, but they need a little help with essential tasks to maintain their autonomy. They might receive assistance bathing or dressing, managing their medications or other forms of personalized assistance that help them maximize their independence.
Memory Support: This specialized care is reserved for those who are experiencing symptoms of memory loss or dementia. Residents live in a safe, secure environment that reduces the risk of wandering. The care team that is both impactful and compassionate is trained specifically to deliver care to individuals experiencing memory loss.
Skilled Nursing: Care may be offered on a short-term, rehabilitative basis for those recovering from an injury or illness, or on a long-term basis for the treatment of chronic conditions requiring medical oversight.
Differentiating Assisted Living vs. Memory Care
While the role and function of independent living and skilled nursing are fairly clear, many families find it more difficult to distinguish between assisted living and memory care services, and many have questions about when to move to assisted living.
There can be similarities and gray areas surrounding these two levels of care, but the differences really come down to two things: the root cause of your loved one’s need for support and the degree of support they need.
Let’s take a deeper look at what that means.
A resident of an assisted living community may need the exact same assistance with bathing and grooming as a memory care resident. However, the assisted living resident’s needs are most likely due to physical or other limitations that hinder them from completing activities of daily living. For a memory care resident, the help is more likely necessary due to motor or cognitive memory loss.
In other words, clearly understanding why your loved one needs extra support can help guide you in choosing the best community.
However, it’s also important to understand that a memory-related diagnosis doesn’t immediately signal that your loved one needs to transition into a memory support community. Memory-related conditions are complicated and progress at unpredictable rates.
In the early stages of memory loss or dementia, it’s perfectly appropriate for your loved one to live in an assisted living community where their needs for support are relatively minimal and caring staff can keep a close eye on signs of symptom progression.
The need for memory-focused care emerges when safety concerns and behavioral changes signal that a more specialized environment would contribute to a better quality of life.
Take Your Time, Until You Need to Take Action
With so much information to digest, it’s understandable that you want to take your time in making the best decision. That’s a responsible and loving approach. Your loved one’s circumstances are uniquely their own, with lots of nuances and variables to consider, so there’s rarely a single clear-cut path of right or wrong.
Starting your research early is a smart step in the right direction. While you’re exploring communities and weighing options, give yourself grace and the gift of time.
Meanwhile, remain alert for some signs that you may need to solidify your plans sooner rather than later:
Safety concerns: If your loved one begins to wander and you’re worried they could become lost, a more secure living arrangement is necessary to protect them. Similarly, if their confusion increases to the point that safety is compromised, a setting designed with safety in mind may be most suitable.
Behavioral changes: If your loved one seems increasingly unsettled, cannot communicate their needs clearly or is becoming combative, you may both feel more secure with different living arrangements.
Increasing reliance: When your loved one becomes forgetful about essential habits like eating and taking medications, needs help you can’t physically provide (such as going to the bathroom) or needs around-the-clock supervision, you may need caregiving support.
Choose a Partner Over a Provider
In today’s senior living market, there is no shortage of options, and there are plenty of resources at your disposal to help you assess a community’s performance. Reviews and ratings can provide valuable data to help guide you to the communities that are best equipped to help your loved one.
However, a final decision often comes down to a gut feel, and that is the result of meeting with potential care teams to find the right fit. Some areas to consider include:
- What kind of credentials do the staff have, and do they receive ongoing training?
- How do they interact with you and your loved one? How do they interact with other residents?
- Is the community well-equipped to provide dementia-friendly care, such as offering secure outdoor spaces and thoughtful design that helps those navigating memory loss feel more at home?
- What security features are in place?
- What amenities are available to your loved one now, and how will that access change if their care needs change?
- Does the community provide therapeutic services, such as those to help manage symptoms of dementia?
Once you narrow down a community that you trust to become a partner in navigating this next chapter with you and your loved one, you can lean on their judgment about decisions like which level of care is the best solution now and down the road.
At Canterbury Court, we’re proud to be recognized as one of the most trusted, compassionate senior care options in Atlanta and a leader in memory support in Atlanta. We welcome the opportunity to become your partner, and we know that begins by helping you make sense of a long list of questions. Give us a call so we can start tackling that list together.