What Is Included In Assisted Living Costs?
When you pay an assisted living facility such as https://vivanteliving.com/ to take care of your loved one, you expect the facility to give the best care, right?
What is included in assisted living costs? Well, a reputable and experienced assisted living facility provides several services that include:
Personalized care
Different seniors have different needs. Some simply need prepared meals and medication reminders, while others can’t function independently and need a full-time person to help them with bathing, dressing, and other daily activities.
An assisted living facility customizes the care they provide depending on the needs of your loved one.
When you take your loved one to the facility, the staff evaluates the cognitive and physical needs of the senior so that they can determine the level of care that the senior requires and come up with a personalized care plan.
Healthy meals
Assisted living facilities understand seniors need healthy meals, and they strive to make them as nutritious as possible. If seniors with medical conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and dysphasia require specialized meals, the facilities prepare them and ensure that everyone is catered for.
Making and taking the meals alone can be boring when you do it for a long time. To make it more fun and engaging, assisted living facilities offer communal dining. The residents gather in the dining room and share their meals, talk about their day and make meaningful connections.
For the residents that can’t walk to the dining rooms or prefer eating in quieter places, the facilities offer in-room dining.
Safety
One of the reasons you took your aging loved one to an assisted living facility is because you want them to be safe.
Prior to taking them to the facility, they might have fallen a couple of times or started a fire in the kitchen, and you got concerned about their safety.
Assisted living facilities have dedicated staff around the clock to ensure that your loved ones are safe and have someone at their disposal when they need help.
Most of the communities have alert systems installed in all rooms, so when a resident needs help, they simply press a button.
These facilities also have security systems that include cameras in common areas and motion sensors in private areas that detect falls.
Other ways that assisted living communities provide safety to your loved ones include:
Managing medications: It’s common for seniors to forget to take their medications while others take them the wrong way. The staff working in the assisted living facilities manage the drugs and ensure that the residents take them as prescribed. The staff also monitors the drug interactions and side effects such as drowsiness and dizziness that put the seniors at the risk of falling.
Providing a safe environment: Most of the areas in the assisted living facilities are easy to access and designed to prevent falls. Even floors and handrails that the seniors can hold to make this possible.
All the areas in the compound are kept clutter-free, and all fall hazards are eliminated. Some facilities even offer safety classes to give the seniors fall prevention tricks to reduce and survive falls.
Helping with the daily activities: Regular daily activities such as dressing and bathing are a fall risk for the elderly. The staff working in assisted living facilities help the residents depending on their unique needs to reduce the risk.
Exercises: As we all know, exercising is vital for a healthy body. The assisted living communities know this, and this is why they keep the seniors active by providing them with exercise classes meant to improve strength, balance, and mobility.
A social, engaging environment
Yes, the money you pay to the assisted living facility caters for this. With over 13.8 million seniors living alone, it’s not uncommon for seniors to be isolated and lonely.
Loneliness has been shown to not only lead to unhappy lives, but it’s also a precursor to bad habits such as excessive drinking, smoking, and poor nutrition. Loneliness has also been shown to lead to dementia, depression, and heart disease.
Due to the community attribute of assisted living facilities, the seniors aren’t lonely. The facilities provide plenty of opportunities for the residents to interact and get to know each other. These activities include: sports, crafts, music, religious activities, and many more.
As you can tell, when your loved one is no longer lonely, they are not only happier and have a positive outlook on life, they also live longer!
Hassle-free living
When the senior is living alone, they have to do everything by themselves. They have to do the cooking, housework, home maintenance, shopping, and many other things.
Since they are old and weak, this can be too much and take a toll on them.
Others put their lives on the line when they drive under the influence of medications.
Plenty of reports have been made of seniors that have set their houses on fire when cooking, while others have fallen and died as when doing their daily chores.
Assisted living facilities take these out of the senior’s hands. This not only saves the senior from the hassle and risks, but it also frees them up so that they can concentrate on other activities that are easier to execute and are more enriching.
Some of the things that the assisted living facilities do for the seniors include:
- Providing meal services
- Doing laundry
- Housekeeping
- Property maintenance
- Transportation to medical appointments
Not all facilities are the same
Now you know what your money will cover when you take your loved one to an assisted living facility. You should note that these services aren’t uniform across all assisted living communities—some facilities provide better services than others.
To avoid disappointment and ensure that your loved one is happy and comfortable, take your time and visit different assisted living facilities and see what they offer.
It doesn’t even hurt to spend a night or two in these facilities to experience the culture, so by the time you are bringing your loved one, you know what you are getting them into.