In this Elder Law Minute, Wes Coulson discusses the different care options for people who are getting older and may soon be in need of some assistance with their everyday living.
Transcript:
Hi! I’m Wes Coulson from Dent-Coulson Elder Law, proudly serving clients throughout the St. Louis metropolitan area and beyond. I’d like to welcome you to our Elder Law and Estate Planning Minute. We do these to help educate people, give them some little tips, and especially to let them know the questions they need to ask, things that they’ve maybe not thought of. Our thought on that is that we can help you best if you realize the things that you need help and that we can help you with. So I hope you enjoy. Thanks!
Let’s talk today about the different care options that are available to someone who is getting older and maybe starting to lose their ability to live independently without some assistance. Let’s start with a thing that, kind of, overrides everything in terms of the level of care and that would be home care. Home care can range from anything like having a family member check in on the one who needs care a couple times a day, to having a paid home care giver in several hours a day, several days a week, to around the clock home care. Now if you’re getting into around the clock home care, you’re talking about something that is way more expensive than any facility.
In terms of facilities, we can start with, what’s called, independent living which is basically for somebody who doesn’t necessarily have care needs, but wants to be relieved of some of the responsibilities like cooking, and exterior lawn maintenance and things of that sort. The next higher level of care is assisted living, and that’s, I describe it as, someone who is not good enough to live at home alone anymore, but not bad enough to need the higher level of care that you would associate with a nursing home. So, in assisted living, there’s kind of a broad range of needing a little help, daily medication reminders, things like that, to needing a higher level of care that, frankly in some cases, there are some people who are in assisted living who would qualify for nursing home care, but they’re nice folks and they’ve been in the assisted living for a while so the assisted living keeps them.
The newest option is something called memory care, and that is for people with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, other forms of dementia, who may be physically healthy, so don’t necessarily need nursing care, but need a lot of people around to watch them, to keep them safe, and guide them. The highest level of care is nursing home care and that’s basically somebody who needs 24 hour supervision, might be prone to falls, might need help for health problems that are ongoing.
So, there are people that can help you to make that decision as to what level of care is appropriate for your family. It’s an important decision, and I hope this is of some help in enabling you to choose wisely. Thanks!
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“Your Trusted Advisor on the Elder Care Journey”
Dent-Coulson Elder Law is dedicated to providing families in the St. Louis area with their Elder Law needs. Our practice areas include Asset Preservation Planning, Veterans Benefits, Medicaid Eligibility, Alzheimer’s Planning, Special Needs Planning, Estate Planning and more. We understand the financial challenges you may face as you and your loved ones grow older. At Dent-Coulson Elder Law, our clients’ well-being is our number one priority. For immediate help, call (618) 632-7000 (IL) or (314) 567-9292 (MO), or Contact Us and we will get in touch as soon as possible.
