As people age, their ability to move about with the same mobility becomes restricted, their minds may wander because of dementia, and habits that were once engrained in stone, such as bathing, doing the laundry, and keeping clean start disappearing. The unkempt, disheveled appearance is a sign that all may not be right.
For seniors who are living on their own and need assistance or families who have seniors living with them, but cannot stay with them all the time, personal care services may be the answer. Around the country, many thousands of families are choosing this type of at-home service over assisted living and nursing home centers as the preferred form of care.
You may be wondering what exactly is a Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program or CDPAP and how it affects you. Essentially, this is a program that allows consumers who are self-directed or those who advocate or work for them to oversee all aspects of personal assistants of their choosing. This means that CDPAP allows for you to do the following with those who want to be personal assistants:
Taking care of the elderly or the disabled is a noble effort of love, but it also provides many challenges that can wear on even the most loving family member. It can be quite stressful as the demands for caregiving only grow over time. Many who provide caregiving services often find themselves struggling with their feelings which include guilt, anger, and even being resentful of the person they are charged with taking care of over time.
It was not long ago that seniors who lived at home received most, if not all caregiving services from their children or other relatives. Today, while family member still make up a large part of the senior caregiving force, there are not professionals who can be hired to provide the same services.
As your parents get older, the need for proper care becomes more apparent as they start to lose the ability to do the things that they did before. Sadly, the care for aging parents often suffers from the fact that their children may not know the best course of action to take. This means that both the parents and children suffer despite their good intentions because they lack the knowledge of what should be done.