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You'll be happy to know that in my part of the country the philosophy of Adult Protective Services is to let people die in their in their own homes (so to speak). Putting old folks in facilities just to keep them safe is old school thinking. Now if said old person is so demented that they can't manage the basics of life and they are beyond being helped by In Home Services designed to help people remain in their home, then yes APS will place that individual.
Views are changing. This is 2015, not 1980.
Jeez, that sounds MIGHTY tempting!!! Where is this place? I have nightmares about some nanny state deciding for me about how I will live the rest of my life, once I get off the hamster wheel! I lived in one for fifteen years (CT). For the sake of pumping up state employee numbers, EVERYTHING was subject to "oversight". Every regulation, of course, carried with it a new department staffed with a minimum of 50 bureaucrats - required to ensure that the regulation was implemented "correctly". Older people became mere instruments to ensure pumped up numbers in state employment! - and BOY, were they nasty. Figuratively waving their fists in your face.
Not for me.
Thanks in advance for info on where I SHOULD retire to escape the state jackboot!
My retired parents tried to age in place. However none of their children had stayed in the family town (one 2,000 miles away, one 1,000 miles away, one in state but a two-hour drive away). When my father died suddenly my physically disabled mother was left with a house and property she was completely unable to care for alone. We finally convinced my mother to move in with me but she was very uncooperative. Now, as it turns out, fifteen years after my father's death she is still alive. In the old town she was desperate to stay in, she only has one friend left who is still living (age 92) and zero relatives remaining.
While people who are still relatively young, in good health, and of sound mind, they need to make specific plans for what they will do when they are NOT capable. Who will drive them when they are unable to drive? (I know no one wants to think about that, but it will happen unless you are willing to put others in danger.) Who will clean their house, do their laundry, buy their groceries, cut their grass, shovel their snow, clean their gutters, etc., etc., when they are no longer capable to do that? If a couple chooses to remain "aging in place," then they need to line up the people who will care for them if they fall ill suddenly, which statistics show one or both of them will do within 15 years of retirement. Even my mother's friend who is still kicking at 92 had cancer and needed in-home care when she was about 75.
Who will take care for an elder's money when they are mentally not cognizant enough to do so? Who will pay their bills and file their taxes and do the yeoman's work of dealing with Medicare and other insurance programs? Who will be the one to get medical and financial powers of attorney? That needs to be decided while a person is of sound mind, not when they already need someone making their decisions. And it needs to be understood and agreed upon by the whole family AND put in writing, along with a will.
Folks: no fair assuming that your kids will just figure this all out for themselves if you neglect to take action yourself. I know plenty of siblings who are no longer speaking to each other and the disputes could have been avoided had the parents been honest with all the children and they had made decisions as a family when the parents were still able to converse about what they wanted to do and why.
Unless you are a millionaire, it's unlikely you will have enough money to face old age getting everything you want, without help from other people. If you expect one of your children is going to take care of you, there needs to be a plan to remunerate them financially separately from money you may will to your other heirs. You can't be taken care of for free. If you are going to an assisted living facility, pick it out long before you need to go there. Pick out the nursing home or hospice you will need if you are totally incapacitated. Hospitals will not keep you once they cannot improve your health. The insurance company will kick you out and you will need a care facility. Don't expect others to make a good decision about that in an emotional crisis situation.
I never felt more sorry for my mother than when my father was in a coma and she had less than a week to figure out, in the midst of her grief, which skilled nursing facility she could afford to have him moved to because the hospital he was in would not let him die there.
The people I know who have lived post-retirement with the most assistance available to them were people who retired to an "over-55 active adult community." They enjoyed their time there while they were able to engage in activities and have an active social life without over-relying of their children. When they faced illnesses they were surrounded by people who knew they were in the same boat and offered help. There were people there to communicate with the person's family. There are neighbors who know who the best doctors and lawyers are. There are people who have been in skilled nursing facilities. Some over-55 communities have levels of care from none-to-death. Even if they don't, it seems easier for people to function in that kind of place than in a community where most of the people are young and working for a living.
Jeez, that sounds MIGHTY tempting!!! Where is this place? I have nightmares about some nanny state deciding for me about how I will live the rest of my life, once I get off the hamster wheel! I lived in one for fifteen years (CT). For the sake of pumping up state employee numbers, EVERYTHING was subject to "oversight". Every regulation, of course, carried with it a new department staffed with a minimum of 50 bureaucrats - required to ensure that the regulation was implemented "correctly". Older people became mere instruments to ensure pumped up numbers in state employment! - and BOY, were they nasty. Figuratively waving their fists in your face.
Not for me.
Thanks in advance for info on where I SHOULD retire to escape the state jackboot!
So just to be clear, if a state government takes over the management and expense of your care if your are demented and unable to care for yourself...... you are under their "jackboot?"
What are your thoughts on where and how to live as you age?
Both my spouse and I have returned "home" to where our parents are as it turns out, so we can 'be there' when they need us. My mother passed away some dozen years ago and MOH's mother two years ago. Our aging father's remain, but we are the only ones to look after them.
MIL had a major stroke many years ago and the multi-level home was NOT conducive to her remaining there, though she did until a final hospital trip after a fall, where she had "The best care" until she passed, better there than in the home.
MY mother's final years in a wheelchair were FAR easier in a ranch style home they had picked out years ago, with all one level. She passed quickly and at home where she wanted to. My father said if he can't live there, he will go to a home. I said I'd take care of him as long as I can, but we all agree we couldn't live together...I'd have to take care of him "remotely".
MOH and I have a home..single level BUT NOT Conducive to healing/altered living arrangement after a major medical mishap either {in other words a wheelchair WILL NOT WORK HERE}. This is Not worth the money to adapt it to better handle aging handicapped bodies. We are looking at: buying a better home, or Senoir housing. the idea of renting doesn't appeal, but it can be better designed for wheelchair and handicapped accessibiltiy. I already use a cane to get around, and MOH will need a hip replacement down the road.And senior housing is based on income for rent, so as income buying declines, so will the effective rent,may even stay the same like rent-control. It will ultimately depend on our finances once the time comes.
I'd rather age in place in my home, but I want a home conducive to doing so,at a price I can afford. I am also afraid, being at the end of the "boomers" we will be left out in the cold as we age and the "war babies' and "older boomers" pass away and there are "fewer to take care of" with the younger boomers left.
Also: our fathers don't seem to mind the cold climate, but we'd rather be out it the warmer climates, so once they may pass , we may move while still able to. But WHERE?
We still have to many variables and doubt that will change until after all our "ancestors" have left us.
WE ARE however,studying the alternatives, and not waiting til a disaster to make hasty decisions. I agree with Jukesgrrl, DON'T WAIT!
personally, i don't have any great desire to age in place. i've lived in a lot of houses, and the only one where that would have even been a consideration, was the rancher i lived in with my husband before his death. and i wonder, 13 years later, if we would had chosen to continue living there now, had he lived, given changes in neighbors, affiliations,health, interests, etc.
in my work as a geriatric social worker, i worked often with adult children who were trying to find a living situation for mom or grandmom, or dad, sometimes aunts, and the list goes on. most of the seniors wanted to remain in their own homes, but what became clear was that, in the majority of cases, this would not be possible without support, sometimes on a daily basis, from family members, usually. and years later, a senior myself, i still see this as the most significant and necessary part of the "aging in place" option. of course there are some seniors who will need only minimal assistance as they age, but they are the exceptions. most people living on their own, into their eighties and nineties +, will need help to to do so. If a person does not have that kind of support sooner or later, often sooner, aging in place does not work.
of course there are sustainable communities that are being developed where communal, supportive living is the model for seniors to maintain themselves in the community with services available and at a a so-called reduced fee, they can have transportation, medical care, grocery shopping, etc. I see this working for a while, depending on how well and how expansive the program is, but i do not see it working as a permanent solution for the majority. one of the major factors to consider in aging is the possibility of dementia/alzheimers, and when cognitive abilities deteriorate no amount of scattered, fragmented services can sustain a person in their own home. deterioration is of course progressive and often happens quickly.
for myself, when i move to a different kind of living, i want it to be the "permanent solution". others may not feel the need for so final a decision, and much of that depends on a person's age, financial situation, and support system when making these decisions. we are really in the age of retirement levels, as lifespans increase, and living longer means for many, doing something different at 78 than what was done at 63. perhaps seniors will see retirement increasingly as a series of living choices, rather than as one permanent, final decision.
I think part of what the article addresses is this mindset that aging in place, meaning staying in one's own home as one becomes infirm, has become the accepted preferable choice, so much so that many will not even consider the alternative. That going into a "home" is a punishment akin to death itself, and that's how just about every boomer I know sees it.
Part of what the article is suggesting is a need for revisioning that preference on the individual level--that we have been sold the idea that aging in our own homes is the goal, and "ending up" in a care facility is a failure.
For myself I don't see that as the case. At the point that I can't be safely in my home, I don't have a problem with finding an alternative. As the article points out, I might have a problem finding an affordable alternative, and that's something that we as a society just MUST get to work on, creatively.
I am all about home and being where I'm comfortable, but I have cared for my elderly grandma in my home and seen the limitations, felt the impact on my own life. It was doable. It would be doable, and desirable, for many. But the whole thing came about because A) She was INAPPROPRIATELY aging in her own home, with no help coming in except for her elderly sister (with her own issues) and her neices (with their own lives and issues). She was malnourished and when she did have emergencies refused to press her "button" for fear they'd come and take her away. So she laid on the floor for hours or days more than once after falling.
Is this what we mean by aging in place?
And how did she come to stay with me? One of her sons wanted her to live in an assisted living facility. The other insisted she'd be fine coming to stay at his house on the fold-out bed. There she was in tears begging not to be put in a "home". She had never even SEEN an assisted living facility, had no idea what it would be like, but had this idea in her head that a "home" is a fate worth than death. We had the space, we retrofitted it to be accessible, and here she stayed until finally going to live with one of her sons in a more appropriate place. She is happy, I don't know about him, lol.
Anyway, I think that's the mindset the article is talking about--that we have this idea that it's all or nothing, that having to go to some "home" is to be desperately avoided. We need to start opening our minds to the possibility that there will come a time when we can't care for ourselves to some degree or another and that in fact there may be BETTER places to be than our own homes when it comes to daily quality of life. What are the options at that point, and how do we combine some joy of living, as Rosemary explored above, with keeping ourselves "safe", with financial feasibility?
How willing are you to let your children and/or grandchildren essentially dictate how and where you spend your retirement years? We're certainly not.
Great! As long as you have provided for your senior years, have POAs and Advance Directives in place, have enough money to pay for whatever care you BOTH may need for DECADES OUT when either one or both of you become incapacitated. I'm sure your children do NOT WANT to be having to clean out some hoarding falling down shack after receiving L&I threats, dealing with cops reporting parents running down the street naked with delusions or setting fires to the house 24/7. OR having to MOVE to "care for" parents who never gave a thought to their situation and are completely combative, uncooperative or unreasonable. AND BROKE.
The Caregiving forum would suggest you are an exception.
Well said: "...opening our minds to the possibility that there will come a time when we can't care for ourselves...."
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