Candidates for Aging in Place, with Shawn D’Amelio

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

The following podcast is provided by care partners living and answers for elders radio. Welcome everyone to answers for elders radio and we are here on the last weekend of April, as we have talked about aging in place and we are here on behalf of care partners senior living, here with Sean Demilio from with a little help. Sean, I’m so glad you’re back and we’re going to have you for the whole hour today. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Well, we’re really thrilled because obviously the surveys say that huge percentage of seniors prefer to stay at home as the age and you know, there’s this little miss known gnomer that you know there’s all these companies that want them to move and they’re afraid that they’re going to have to move, but that isn’t really the case and and I think that’s why we have you here and really to just determine number one, you know, who makes a great candidate to age in place? Right? That’s a good question, isn’t it? What makes a great candidate? Are they are they able to function at home by themselves? MMM, to start with, are they able to cook their own mills and have nutritious meals? Are they able to still drive and get to the doctor’s appointments that they need to get to? Are they able to still go grocery shopping? Are they able to cook their our own mills? It gets harder as you get older. Sometimes when you have a walker and you’re trying to cook a mill, you’re trying to carry put a pot of boiling water from the stove right to the sink to drain it with a Walker Right, those things become challenging. The things we take for granted every single day. Well, and I think too that you know even if you need help with some of those things. That’s what, with a little help, can help a senior with. But there’s also that piece of you know your living environment, your support network. We’ve talked about that. So there’s a lot of different and there’s different options in aging in place. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stay in the family home. You could necessary, you could move into it over fifty five. You know community, you could live in the independent side of independent living before you move forward. I know care partners has that right opportunity. So there’s different ways in which you can make a choice, and I think that’s one of the things that I really would like to explore with you today on how can we best make that choice for us if we want to age in place. I think one of the main things is talking about it before you’re in a position where the decisions made for you right good, so you’ve got a really good game plan going forward. And I’ve always said sometimes you need a little bit of help MMM to to get to be more successful being independent. People think when you bring help in or you have a little bit of help, that you’re losing your independence, when in reality you’re keeping your independence actly with just a little bit of support system. And there are there are concepts like the village concept love. There’s a lot of villages in Seattle, nest being one of them. They are a wonderful organization where you’re a member and they have volunteers that you say you need your lawnmode once a week and they have a volunteer that says they want to mow a lawn once week. That kind of a program is a love that. Yeah, it’s a really good support system to bullet and it also has a social aspect, sure, because they do a lot of social activities. Hm. So I’d say that’s one of them. One of them is do you have a social group or are you being isolating in your home? Because that’s one of the things that happens is you become very isolated when you’re home alone all the time and you don’t have people coming to visit you. You you can’t get out, you can’t drive, you can’t drive to church, you can’t drive to events. So those things start tie slate. And the other thing is, are you mobile? Are you are things stacking up, because you do have a walker. So your things are stacking up around you because it’s hard to take all the papers out to the recycle, it’s hard to take the boxes out to the recycle, it’s hard to do your laundry. Hmm, I have a good friend. Hard to walk the dog, hard to Arge, it hard to, you know, go out and get the mail right. You know, those are the things that when you think about, well, I’m don’t get my mail for three or four days, that’s a red flag. Right, we do say some of the things are red flags. So when we start saying when is when is it right to bring some a little bit of helping and that’s when somebody’s appearance starts to decline deep point. Maybe they are not putting their makeupun like they use too. Maybe their clothing is becoming soiled. HMM. Perhaps their papers, their bills are stacking up, they have late bills, they’re missing appointments. Those are some signs that somebody might need a little bit of help. Uh Huh, right, and that’s the first layer. Doesn’t necessarily right they have to go into senior living per se or assist at living, but there’s that bridge factor and I think ninety nine percent of seniors go through that process that they may never ever need senior living, but they may need a little bit of help, quote unquote, yeah, to be able to, you know, to function more effectively in their home right. I always say, let us do the hard stuff so you have the energy to do the fun stuff. Absolutely no, we can help you with we can help you with anything from lighthouse keeping, bathing dressing outings, grocery shopping, meal preparation. We’ve we would go in for one gentleman, we’d make a week’s worth of meals. Would spend the day there. We made a week’s worth of meals and see, that’s so important. It’s just it’s having that ability to have that backup or that buffer right to be able to do things like and how easy it is for that gentleman to be able to pop a meal in a microwave right, right, once it’s already made. He thought it’s all he had to do. That’s awesome. So we are talking again today with Seann Emilio and Sean Is. You’re the director of business development of with a little help, and Sean, you are one of my favorite people in the world. Tell us about with the little help. With a little help is a locally owned company. We’ve been in business for twenty years now. I’m proud to say that we have amazing caregivers. Our caregivers are the heart and soul of what we do. We do a lot of education, not only for our caregivers but for our community and for our for the state of Washington. Actually, we also we put on a conference every year in September. We put on a care conference for caregivers, social workers, care managers, and it’s for family caregivers. I it’s a wonderful opportunity for people to learn a lot of we had, I think we had eighteen speakers at our last collas awesome dis education and you are partnered per se, kind of a power partnership with care partners. We ought to work with care partners. Well, staying at home isn’t right for everybody. Right. Some people need more help than they a maybe can afford. Maybe they just need more support twenty four hours a day. We’re able to stay with somebody twenty four hours a day, but it can be expensive when you’re having somebody to I just had somebody asked me that, like how much would that cost if somebody was going to stay, and I just kind of threw a number out, but I figured it probably be a lot of yeah, it’s money, Uh Huh. You know, in while long term care insurance does help cover not everybody has long term care insurn correct right, so a lot of its private pay. I’m excited to say that Medicarey is going to start covering some of the expenses for home care, which will be I love that. That will be huge in the state of Washington. I think that state of the Washington there was just an article in the Olympian that was talking about it and I haven’t got to the article, but I did see the head lines. We might be the first state that it’s so needed. It’s so, so needed, absolutely so. And so as you work with care partners, basically you can work with a senior for to help them stay independent as possible long as possible, but they’re may come a day where they can’t. It’s that the cost of having you do that is more overwhelming and just living in a house that where you have to worry about maintenance and right and property taxes and all those things on a fixed income can kind of be on daunting right. As a young person when I went into a community, I remember the first thing I said was, why do people not want to do this? They Cook for you, they clean for you, you’ve got you get to do all the fun things and they’re doing all the work for we had Daphne on last week. Yeah, talked about that bucket list and I loved her to say that. You know, there’s sometimes when seniors are at home but they’d love to do some things, but it’s like they’re just being weighted down by house because they’re living in there in their world. And what would happen if you were freed up from all this responsibilities? What is on your bucket list right, and how could you do that? I like thought, wow, you know, that is a really powerful thing to think about. If you could start to look at that. And maybe it starts that bucketless starts with getting somebody to come in and help you with, you know, lighthouse keeping and meal preparation and, you know, little things that you may have a challenge with. I think it surprises people what a big difference home care can make in their behalves. A very good friend of mine who just had home care start for her and just very, very nervous about the whole process, about having the carrier there the first time, about and after they start coming. She said to me, you have no idea how this has changed my life absolutely, which I absolutely because it’s taken all the burden off of her. Well, and not to mention the companion piece, which I think is it’s not an quote unquote, a DL activity of daily living. That right qualifies you for, you know, to but isolating yourself is can be so detrimental in so many ways and being this is the one thing that I worry about for seniors is, you know, they like purpose. They don’t have you know, they sit and watch TV, all day, they sit in their chair all day, they don’t get up, they don’t you know. So they do lose our motation. They pull into themselves and that creates so many aspects. So to have somebody that comes in with a wonderful smile, that you know you can go run errands with and go to the grocery store and get out, that is so huge. It is it’s so funny because sometimes people will be why I don’t? I really don’t want to have somebody come, I really don’t. We come in, we’ll start working with somebody and a month later they never want them to leave. Right, right. It’s all about the relationship and I think we forget that sometimes it’s not just about the fact that we’re going into helps give some a bath. It’s about the real relationship. It’s totally true. It’s like my mom, even though she was in assisted living, she would she always just wanted, well, would you just stay and have a you know, I’ll get you some root beer. Would you like to drink? It’s like mom, mom, they they are on the clock. You know, they got other seniors to work with, which she had a little bit of dementia. She didn’t totally understand that, but it was the thing that she needed, that, you know, the companionship, and used to break my heart and when she would say that and I thought to myself, you know, this is such a huge, bigger piece than what we realize and that relationship that she built, that they build with their caregiver right so important. I think just sometimes just being present with somebody is important. You know, even love it, just being present. So, Sean, how do we reach you? You can reach us at our office, which is to zero six, three, five, two, seven, three ninety nine, and now you can go to our website, which is with a little hilpcom. And thank you again to care partners for having you here. Thank you. They are awesome and we’re look forwards with hearing from you in the next segment. Thanks so much. The preceding podcast was provided by care partners living and answers for elders radio to contact care partners living co to care partners livingcom