We already know that 89% of people do not want to leave their homes but Dean Martin never knew how treasured his music was going to be by a dancing grandma.
Living Well and dancing at home, priceless.
‘Uncategorized’ Posts
Living Well and Dancing at Home: Priceless!
Monday, July 5th, 2010House Safety: An Important Matter When Aging in Place
Monday, July 5th, 2010
Home Safety, important matter to age in place.
Our homes fulfill many needs for us. Often, the most basic need is for shelter from the elements and intruders. Once we are protected and secure, other needs can be met. Comfort and a place for self-expression are vital for our well-being. Home gives a feeling of independence. Ourhome should also be a place in which we can be safe from accidents and injuries.
A Housing Safety Checklist for Older People prepared by Sarah D. Kirby, Extension Housing Specialist, and published by NORTH CAROLINA COOPERATIVE EXTENSION SERVICE. North Carolina State University and North Carolina A&T State University commit themselves to positive action to secure equal opportunity regardless of race,color, creed, national origin, religion, sex, age, or disability. The guide-checklist stresses that “…Home accidents are a major source of injuries and can cause death. Older persons, whose bones are often less dense and more brittle, are especially vulnerable to serious injuries from home accidents. A simple fall that results in a broken bone can become a serious, disabling injury that limits one’s independence…”
On the guide, you will find a series of checklists. Use these lists as you go through your home. Make a check mark next to those items or behaviors that you already have. If there are items that you do not check, then your home is not as safe as it could be. By improving those items not marked, you can make your home a safer and more comfortable place to live. While the suggestions in this publication are for older people, they apply to all age groups as well.
Baby Boomers May Need to Find New Care Networks to Care for Their Golden Years.
Sunday, June 20th, 2010In a paper presented at the 2010 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, held this week at Concordia. University in Montreal, Jacques Légaré and other researchers at the Université de Montréal, stated that Baby Boomers will need to be creative when it comes to find new alternatives to senior care.
“…Who are tomorrow’s seniors going to call when the going gets rough? Today’s young adult may not have a child to help out when they become older? Today’s adult is having less children. Because of this when they are elderly they may need to have non-traditional support networks or pay for the care that past generations relied on their own children for. That’s the findings of Jacques Légaré, professor at the Université de Montréal. Légaré studies
Baby Boomers Aging
aging baby-boomers. Baby Boomers are a generation that had fewer children and were less likely to have a stable marriage. Légaré stated that until 2030 the family circle involving senior citizens will be evolving. For about 70 percent of today’s frail seniors the family circle provides care. Generally that care comes from the children or their spouse. They are the last population before the baby boom after World War II. Today’s Baby Boomer generation is rapidly hitting the golden years but not with the same family security that their parents had. With divorce, blended families and common-law unions the family scheme is vastly different than in their parents’ day. Adding in medical advancements that have increased life span brings an unclear picture of who is going to care for those unable to care for themselves. “Tomorrow’s elderly – today’s boomers – had far fewer children. Who will take care of them?” Légaré asked, “They risk finding themselves in difficult circumstances and might have to turn to the public system or pay their way.”
A Diversity Toolkit for Providing respectful Services for Any Diverse Community
Sunday, June 20th, 2010
Living Well Supports Diversity on Aging
The Administration on Aging just released A Toolkit for Serving Diverse Communities.
This Toolkit provides the Aging Network and its partners with a replicable and easy-to-use method for providing respectful, inclusive, and sensitive services for any diverse community. The Toolkit consists of a four-step process and a questionnaire that assists professionals, volunteers and grassroots advocates with every stage of program planning, implementation and service delivery for older adult communities, their families and caregivers.
The core principles of the toolkit include respect, inclusion and sensitivity as the hallmarks of quality service. This Toolkit is an invitation to make a cultural shift in service provision, to learn, to grow and fully appreciate the diverse community of older adults that agencies and their partners serve.
Download the AoA Diversity Tool Kit
Driving and Aging
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
Helpguide.org on its senior driving guide stresses the point of statistics showing that”… the elderly are more likely than other drivers to receive traffic citations for failing to yield, turning improperly, and running red lights and stop signs—all indications of decreased driving ability. It is a fact that older adults are at higher risk for road accidents than other age groups. Older drivers are more likely to get into multiple-vehicle accidents than younger people do, and the accidents are more dangerous for them than for younger drivers. A person 65 or older who is involved in a car accident is more likely to be seriously hurt, more likely to require hospitalization, and more likely to die than younger people involved in the same crash. Truth is, fatal crash rates rise sharply after a driver has reached the age of 70…”
Linda Fodrini-Johnson of Eldercare Services gives us few practical tips on how to tell Dad, to stop driving!
There is Hope….New Tools to Detect Alzheimer’s
Sunday, May 16th, 2010
Avid, Bayer, General Electric Push Agents to Spot the Disease From Brain Scans.
Living Well has been doing research for the best practices to assist and support people with Alzheimer’s. Now we have good news.
In an article by Shirley Wang, in the Wall Street Journal on April 15, 2010, we learned that “…companies specializing in medical imaging are pushing to develop chemical agents to detect Alzheimer’s disease from brain scans, a process that one day may make it possible to predict who will suffer from the progressive ailment before symptoms appear.
Avid Radiopharmaceuticals Inc., a tiny imaging company based in Philadelphia, and multinationals like Bayer, AG and General Electric Co., are among those working on imaging compounds to help doctors spot signs of the memory-robbing disease. Such chemical compounds would be a first of their kind and would help their makers tap into the multibillion dollar Alzheimer’s diagnostic market. These diagnostic tools will be important to developing new treatments as well. Many experimental Alzheimer’s treatments appear to work better in patients with less severe forms of the disease but are too weak to have an effect on patients by the time they are diagnosed today…” Read more
Technology Can Help Track “Wanderers” with Dementia
Monday, May 10th, 2010
The need for special training and smart technology to help track the rising number of people with dementia who wanders beyond logic patterns was raised in a recent article by Kirk Johnson in The New York Times, Johnson explains that “…For generations, the prototypical search-and-rescue case in America was Timmy in the well, with Lassie barking insistently to summon help. Lost children and adolescents — from the woods to the mall — generally outnumbered all others…But last year for the first time, another type of search crossed into first place here in Virginia, marking a profound demographic shift that public safety officials say will increasingly define the future as the nation ages: wandering, confused…” Read more
Living Well Assisted Living at Home, Inc. proposes combining smart technology with specialized services can help to keep these people safe at home. Models like the one they called High Tech-High Touch offers a solution to the challenge of caring for elders who experience any type of dementia or cognitive decline and want to stay at home instead of going to an institution.
