Columbia Aged Care

Choosing the right nursing home can be difficult and overwhelming for many carers. You want to ensure that the nursing home you choose will provide the best care for your loved one. However, with so many nursing homes available, how do you compare them to ensure you make the right choice?

The first step to finding the right nursing home is to start searching for homes in your area. Once you have a list of potential nursing homes you should then visit each home to assess them.

The Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing has put together a Nursing Home checklist that will help you to compare each nursing home by asking the right questions.

Some of the questions on the Nursing home checklist are:

Staff

• What was the attitude of the staff assisting you?
• What training do the care staff have?
• How many staff members provide overnight care?
• What type of care or services cannot be provided?

Rooms

• Are single rooms available or will your loved one have to share?
• What arrangements are there to ensure privacy for residents?
• What furnishings and personal items can your loved one bring and what is supplied?

Food

• What are the meal arrangements?
• Is there easy access to well-maintained outdoor areas?

Other

• How can family and friends be involved in your loved one’s care?
• What transport is accessible for visiting shops and family?
• Can the nursing home meet your loved one’s medical and special needs?
• Do you or your loved one understand the costs associated with care?

You can also prepare your own specific questions to add to the checklist and remember to take a new checklist to every nursing home you visit.

Feel free to conduct second or third visits to each nursing home to ensure you make the right choice.

Hopefully with a little bit of preparation and by asking the right questions you can find the best nursing home for your loved one.

Read the full checklist here.

When your loved one is moved into a nursing home it is important that they don’t feel abandoned and that their close relationships continue.

However, many people can become uncomfortable or distressed when visiting a nursing home. Aged Carer has given some helpful tips to create a more enjoyable and comfortable environment for when you visit your loved one.

• If your loved one is immobile or cannot communicate, holding their hand, stroking their forehead or quietly talking to them will let them know you care.
• Share a meal with your loved one in the dining room or order take away.
• Bring a family pet to visit, go for a walk around the garden and show off the pet to other residents.
• Bring a grandchild to visit. If they have a favourite book have them read it out loud to your loved one or if they play a musical instrument bring it along and put on a mini concert.

A short visit can break up your loved one’s daily routine and for many residents in an aged care facility a family visit is the highlight of their week. Making your loved one feel important and a part of the family is the best way to ensure your loved one is happy and content.

To read the full article, click here.

It is a common reaction to try and correct a loved one when they don't recognise you and call you by the wrong name. It is again a normal reaction to try to correct them if they tell you that they're waiting for the boyfriend they had at 17 when they are clearly well past their 70s.

Unfortunately these slips in memory may become more frequent as a loved one progresses further and further into Alzheimer's disease. Alot of the time your loved one may become unsettled and even angry if you correct them. A number of articles have been written on how to respond to loved ones suffering from Alzheimer's.

The Free Library has written an interesting article titled A world of their own that explores how it might work if we don't continually try to bring them back from their false sense of reality. 

Memory fails us all sometimes. (Quick what did you have for dinner last night?) Over time, our memory lapses multiply, a medical fact of life that we attribute to eroding brain cells and simple aging. Eventually, short-term memory may be all but lost, so we cling to that which was comfortable – the good old days.

But Alzheimer’s disease goes one horrible step further, submerging its victims’ minds into decades-old realities from which they can never emerge.

The process begins with simple memory loss, but gradually "Where are my car keys?" turns into I've forgotten how to drive." It escalates to the point where victims no longer recognise their closest loved ones.

But if you think it's frightening for the relatives of an Alzheimer's patient, imagine what it must be like to have the disease.

"I believe it's close to being dropped off in a foreign country, where the language is foreign, the people are foreign, and everything around you is something you've never seen before," says Jeannette Smith, executive director of Arden Courts, a Sarasota assisted living.

Traditional therapies for Alzheimer's involved reminding--and often challenging--patients to return to their present surroundings. But a therapy called "validation" seeks instead to provide a comfortable existence for the patient within whatever reality they choose.

That means if an 84-year-old woman wants to dress every day for a job she no longer has, she should do so.

Validation therapy was pioneered by Naomi Feil, who developed an acute understanding of seniors while growing up in the nursing home her father managed. The technique encourages caregivers to identify and empathise with the disorientation that causes so much of the anguish of Alzheimer's.

According to Feil, patients under this treatment cry less, withdraw less, communicate more and are less aggressive. They need fewer chemical and physical restraints and seem to regain their sense of humour.  But just as important, validation therapy has given caregivers higher morale and reduced burnout.

Validation is based on the theory that victims who lose their recent memory revert to pleasant periods in their lives. She suggests that instead of viewing Alzheimer's patients as diseased, we see them simply as very old people struggling to survive in whatever reality the condition has plunged them into.

To read full article Click Here 

Feel unable to relate to your loved one when Alzheimer's transports them back to an earlier era? Find some movies from earlier decades your loved one likes or make them a CD with some old favourites. 

The Australian Government's Department of Health and Ageing has compiled a list of the most commonly asked aged care questions and provided answers.

*  Accessing care
    - How do I find an aged care home that meets my needs?
    - I need high-level care but I don't know how to track down Nursing Homes in my area. Is there a list of them anywhere? 
    - What is an ACAT Assessment and why do I need one?  
    - Who makes the decision whether I could receive community care at home or need to go into an aged care home?

* Aids and equipment
     - I have a teletypewriter but my sister does not. How can I ring her if I need to?

* Carer support
     - My aunt is living at home, but only managing because I help her a lot. I have my elderly mother and my own family to care for as well and am finding it increasingly difficult to cope. Is there someone I can talk to about what I can do?

* Caring for someone in care
    - I've looked after Dad since Mum died, but now he is going to an aged care home. Will they do everything for him?

* Cultural and identified needs
   - I am a war veteran from another country but now an Australian citizen. Should I go to DVA or Centrelink for my income assessment? 
   - We live in the country - is residential care available locally or will grandma have to go away from her family and friends?

* Culturally and linguistically diverse
    - Do aged care homes provide care for specific cultural or linguistic groups? 
    - How do I find an aged care home with residents and staff who speak my language so I can communicate with them?

* Entering an aged care home
    - Once I go into an aged care home, do I have to stay there?

* Fees and costs
    - Do you pay fees before you move into an aged care home? 
    - How much does residential aged care cost? 
    - If I'm receiving transition care will I have to contribute to the daily cost? 
    - My fee advice letter mentioned Class C hardship supplement - what does that mean?

To view answers to these questions and many more Click Here

Trying to think up new activities you can do with your loved one each time you visit the nursing home can be difficult. What's something different that your loved one will enjoy doing? How can you entertain your loved one and make sure they have a good time?

Janienne Jennrich offers seven activities that might be fun and engaging for both you and your loved one to do on your next visit.

Introduce new gadgets
Items like a digital camera may be a novelty for your loved one. Take photos of things they like and let them take photos.
You could also make a scrap book that the two of you could go through together.

Get your loved one active

When your loved one is in an aged care facility it is not likely that you are able to spend every waking moment with them.

Have you ever wondered how your loved one spends their time when you are not around? Do they mingle with the other residents? Do they watch TV? Do they do fun activities? Do they garden or knit? Do they read the paper? Do they play cards?

At Columbia Aged Care centres there is a Recreational Activities Officer. Rest assured that your loved one is living a full day with a schedule of activities to participate in daily. The role of the RAO is to think up and carry out these fun activities with the residents. 

ABC writer Daniel Hamilton shared his experiences from a day he spent in a nursing home in Memoirs From a Nursing Home;

I wasn't sure of what to expect when I wandered into the nursing home. Would it be a scary place, would I be confronted with pain and suffering or old dementia patients thinking I was a long lost relative? It wasn't like that at all.

The first morning I was to spend with a group known as Secret Men's Business. A weekly gathering of men to chat about life and days gone by, there was just one rule - no women (well except the nurses).

The divisional therapist thought it would be good to speak to Len he was in his nineties and had been a Mackay local for some time. He was one of the first in the room as others were being brought down from other wards.

Sitting down I wasn't sure where to begin conversation, after all there was almost a 70 year age gap. I asked about Mackay, how long had he lived here. All of his life, he proudly answered.

So away we went chatting about how Mackay was back in his day - amazing stories.

An historical human insight without dates and numbers seems increasingly rare to come by.

Tales about a riding a horse into town, how the Americans filled the town in the second world war, how he had to cut sugarcane by hand and the strain of rations in the depression.

It was like experiencing a real life history documentary on Mackay.

Other residents start to arrive at the group....

To read full article CLICK HERE