Four Areas to Consider When Assessing Needs for Your Senior

Being a caregiver means that you need to spend a good bit of your time assessing how your senior is doing and what she needs in order to meet her own goals, like aging in place. It can help to categorize those different areas so that you ensure you’re covering all of the bases for your elderly family member.

General Safety Issues

Your senior’s overall safety is a huge consideration. Any issues, big or small, that have an impact on her overall safety need to be addressed as quickly and as thoroughly as you can. This might mean taking over home maintenance tasks for your senior or making sure her home is clutter-free and clean every week.

Physical Health and Conditions

Your senior likely has at least one or two chronic health conditions that need to be watched, but there may be others developing, too. You also need to pay attention to changes in her mobility and whether she’s experiencing pain or other issues that need to be addressed. Other issues, like dietary considerations, sleep habits, and whether she’s exercising or not can also factor in. Your senior’s health can seem to change much more quickly now than it did in the past.

Problems with Her Memory

Memory issues are a massive concern both for aging adults and for their caregivers. For so many seniors, those small senior moments can feel as if they’re a harbinger of something a lot bigger, like Alzheimer’s disease. Not every memory issue means that your elderly family member is developing Alzheimer’s, but if she’s concerned at all, her doctor can do some tests to see what’s happening.

Her Emotional Well-being

Emotional wellness involves not just your senior’s moods, but also factors such as whether she’s socializing as she normally would. Withdrawing is sometimes necessary and it can be normal, but if your elderly family member has withdrawn to the point that she is isolating herself, that’s not a good sign. She can be susceptible to depression and to other psychological problems that are better avoided.

This can be a lot for you to keep up with tracking on your own. Senior care providers can help you to notice even small differences in your senior’s behaviors or health that you might not have noticed otherwise. They can also help to take over some of the tasks that have become more difficult for your senior, all while offering friendly companionship.