What Is Your Role as a Caregiver to Someone with Dementia?

By Shanele Healy | November 7, 2018 |

Dementia has a way of changing your senior’s life overnight. It can also rapidly change the timeline and the context of what you thought being a caregiver for her was going to be like. Finding a new perspective on caregiving for an elderly family member with dementia is crucial.

Elder Care Cornelius NC – What Is Your Role as a Caregiver to Someone with Dementia?

Assessing Needs

While it might seem that everyone with dementia has the same needs, that is not entirely true. The illness progresses at different rates and your elder may have other health concerns that factor in as well. So part of your role is learning and assessing what your senior needs most in her unique situation.

Coordinating Care

There are different services and therapies that your elderly family member may need. Occupational therapy, for instance, can help both you and your aging adult learn how to help her to accommodate certain needs. As your elder’s caregiver, you’ll be the one helping to manage all of those different care needs.

Ensuring Safety

Safety is a huge concern for every caregiving situation, but it can feel a little more intensive when it comes to a family member with dementia. You’ll want to make sure that kitchen appliances are either locked or have safety shut-off knobs installed. Locking away chemicals and anything else that’s dangerous is vital. But so too are basic safety essentials, such as ensuring that tripping hazards are removed from the home.

Helping Where Necessary

When and where you help your aging family member may change each day or over time. One day she may need help with household tasks, cooking, and transportation to her appointments. The next day, she might find it difficult to brush her hair.

Handling Practical Concerns

Your senior’s overall ability to keep up with certain situations is likely to change quickly with dementia. At first, she may handle paying her bills on her own. But eventually, you may need to take those tasks over for her. It’s best to discuss how your loved one wants to handle these sorts of issues before her dementia progresses, if it’s at all possible.

As you gain more experience in caregiving for someone with dementia, you’ll start to find your footing. You’ll find that the more that you learn the easier things get, too. Consider joining a support group so that you can meet other caregivers in your same situation. Elder care providers can handle things while you’re gone and you can put what you learn to work again right away.

If you or an aging loved one are considering Elder Care Services in Cornelius NC, please call the professional staff at Caring at Heart today at (704) 379-7510. Serving Charlotte, Statesville, Ballantyne, Mooresville, Huntersville, Matthews, Concord, Gastonia, Pineville and Indian Trail.

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Shanele Healy

Owner at Caring at Heart

Caring for others has always been a passion for the owner. She joined the healthcare field while still in high school believing that every health provider had the same intentions at heart. While working as a nurse assistant,Gloria quickly realized that those whom needed us most were being neglected and not receiving the best quality of care they deserved.
Knowing in her heart that families deserved better, she started Caring At Heart in 2008 with two key goals in mind: To provide clients and their families with an experience that was personable, easy, and reassuring and to create a working environment that employees were excited and proud to be a part of.