The Area Agency on Aging of Western Michigan is hosting cooking classes for male caregivers who may need to brush up on their cooking skills, or begin to develop them. The site is Uptown Kitchen, 423 Norwood Ave SE, Grand Rapids MI 49506. Session 1 runs on Tuesday (July 10, 17, 24 & 31) from 11:00am-1:30pm. Session 2 runs on Tuesday (September 4, 11, 18 & 25) from 11:00am-1:30pm.
You can register at registration@aaawm.org.
There is no charge for these classes.
I had the pleasure of touring Trillium Senior Homes in Grand Rapids recently. This is a new kind of assisted living residence, according to owner Pat Thompson. Pat and his wife Sandie have purchased four residences in the northeast part of Grand Rapids on a small private street. Their model is a Bed’n Breakfast-style of assisted living residence.
The home I was in is beautifully arranged, warm and comfortable and bears no resemblance to an institutional setting. It really is like a B’n B. The rooms are spacious with wide molding along the walls for mounting photos and other personal objects. Medical and personal assistance can be arranged on an as-needed basis. A few other amenities are: memory foam-toppers on beds, on-site exercise area, large yard that feels like a park, homes are conveniently located to freeways, medical care and shopping, 24/7 on-call medical assistance. The cost for a room at Trillium is average for the Grand Rapids-area.
For more information, contact Pat at trilliumseniorhomes@gmail.com.
Grand Rapids’ local Clark Retirement Community produced a sweet lip-dub video in July 2011. The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ7-n930zJo. The video simply underscores how expectations for our elders need to change. The stars of this video are independent but not without their medical issues. As Baby Boomers begin to move into senior housing, you can expect many forms of expression similar to this video. Enjoy it and think about what joy you can bring to seniors in your community.
Hospice services are becoming increasing prevalent around the country. When you face an imminent end-of-life situation, hospice services provide medical and social support to enable one’s final days to be spent comfortably, and often, at home. Look up your local hospice providers (there may be more than one in your community) and learn more about this consoling alternative.
So many things are hopping around, looking for daylight, in the senior home technology field. A few things for you to watch for:
I love dogs. However, a recent call about an elderly woman and her dogs made me just shake my head with frustration. The caller told me that her mother had suffered two falls AND two back surgeries due to tripping over her little dogs. ‘They scamper about and are always underfoot’ she said. Would your mother consider getting rid of them, I asked. Oh no, she replied, she just LOVES HER DOGS!!! Yep, loves them more than independence itself I guess.
SafeCall does a great job of keeping people safe at home but you gotta wanna be safe in the first place, don’t you?
There is healthy skepticism over the role of technology in serving our aging loved ones. Let’s not confuse technology with human connections. Talking to a friendly voice over a speaker is a distant second to being in the same room with a caregiver, even if the caregiver isn’t a close friend or family. People need people. Current research states that people with the most human connections are happiest.
That said, let’s understand the true value of emergency help buttons, pill reminders and the full array of medical alarms. Technology serves us very well as a monitoring and alerting platform. I think the biggest growth in serving the elderly comes from providing the human touch. That’s why there are so many private duty home care agencies in business today. Private duty caregivers don’t provide medical care, generally. They do provide companionship, help with chores, and other household needs. Technology dealers, myself included, need to find the balance point, not the tipping point.
My last post described the various problems associated with using a cell phone as a home safety device for an elderly person.
So what can you do to keep your elderly loved ones safe in the home? The most reliable method to date is still the Personal Emergency Response Service or help button, ie. help I’ve fallen and can’t get up. It is simple to use, waterproof and does not require periodic recharges. You can be visually impaired or have a hearing loss and your safety will not be compromised.
The button component (remote activator) is comfortably worn on the wrist or around the neck. The buttons are also exposed to vigorous shock, heat and water testing to ensure they can withstand soaking, temperature extremes and being dropped on a hard floor. This is true if the PERS unit carries the UL (Underwriter’s Laboratory) certification. Check your provider. Not all PERS units are UL-certified.
Additional features include text and voice messaging to responders (for those of us who do use cell phones daily) and online/email reporting to keep other family members in the loop if they live too far away to be physical responders.
Adaptive switches are available for people whose motor functions are severely limited by stroke, Muscular Sclerosis, spinal cord and head injuries or even near-complete paralysis. Many reputable companies sell these services including SafeCall www.safecall.biz, the company I started in 1995. This service costs about $1/day and has a long history of providing home safety to the elderly and disabled.
The PERS unit is the gateway to numerous other beneficial products. Automated medication dispensers, motion sensors, pressure-sensitive floor pads, door alarms and smoke detectors are among numerous accessories that integrate with a PERS to contact caregivers within seconds of alarming.
While the cellular phone industry has begun to recognize the safety needs of the elderly (which don’t include texting, music players and downloading apps), they still need to overcome issues of battery life and signal loss in large apartment buildings and rural communities. And cell phones still need to be designed for users with unsteady hands, poor sight and hearing. Home medical alarms manufacturers resolved these issues years ago.
© Sanford Freed 2009.
SafeCall, Inc.
3148 Plainfield NE, Suite 243
Grand Rapids, MI 49525
(888) 291-0639
info@safecall.biz
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