What’s the only thing more challenging than caring for your senior parents? Caring for your senior parents who live far away from you. That presents a whole new set of obstacles! Fortunately, Home Care Assistance is here to help you get the logistics of long-distance senior care in order. Take a look at our tips below for helping your elderly parents from a distance.
Assess the situation and know your options.
The first step to providing the best care for your long-distance senior parents is assessing their situation – What is there state of health and their living situation? Getting this information may involve contacting their current physicians or having a caregiver provide you with frequent updates. You will also want to get the family together to define who is going to be responsible for what. For example, a sibling who lives nearby the parents might be designated with the task of daily or weekly check-ins.
Get organized and automated.
Next in this step, automate as many of your senior parent’s affairs as possible. Set up items like automatic bill pay, auto-renewal for any newspaper subscriptions, prescription refills, and even grocery delivery. It is helpful to consider this as you are running a second household. What would you want to make sure is provided for you, in case you were to forget or were unable to handle it?
Keep in touch.
It may seem obvious, but we encourage you to visit your parents in person as much as possible! This is the best way to physically check in on their wellbeing, assess anything else they may need, and to spend time bonding with them. Even if you are unable to visit them as much as you’d like, perhaps your parents will have other friends or family nearby. If that’s the case, you can encourage them to visit with your parents when you are not able to.
If you still need more options, you’re in luck. Technology is certainly more useful to help everyone stay social from a distance! For the more tech-savvy senior parents, make sure they are able to use basic function to keep in touch with you – phone calls, video chats, text messages, and email. For parents who are less capable of navigating technology, consider having a caregiver who can share logs and plans for your senior with you online on a daily basis, or who can help your senior make a video phone call to you.
Do you need help developing a senior care plan for your senior parents? Home Care Assistance is here to help you! Please call us to schedule your consultation and learn about your options.