How To Prepare Your Parent For The Move Into A Long Term Care Facility
How do I prepare my parent for the move into a long-term care facility if it becomes necessary?
Moving into a long-term care facility can be a very positive, or a very traumatic experience. One of the ways to do that is to start early, and to look realistically at what lies ahead. Again, I had talked about looking at the finances. What do they want? If they want to stay home, or maybe it's the time that they want to be social. Their social group is diminishing and their support systems where they are is diminishing, and they want to move next to their children. A great time to talk about that is when it's not in crisis. You can prepare for it. They can go to these places, visit places that may be options, have meals at these places, whether one decision may be to stay in their own community or move to be closer to children. There's not a right or wrong to that, but you have to do these things in advance. Moving once is a trauma. Moving twice is more than a trauma, and we see many people die in the process. You have to get the most appropriate place. If you move into a facility that doesn't supply any assistance, and this is all that you can afford, and you're going to have to move out as soon as you get assistance, it might be better to move into a little bit more restrictive environment, so that becomes your home, and you can stay there and age in place. Again, people want to age in place, and that assisted living can become your home, but the timing is everything on this, and preparation is vastly important.
