Call a Living Options Specialist today!
If you are 18 years old or older, you need advance directives. Having advance directives is one of the most adult-like things any adult can do. It is adulting at the highest level.
But why?
As Baby Boomers inch ever closer to old, old age, conversations about declining health and nursing home costs in Florida are becoming the norm among adult children. Eventually, these talks turn to concerns about who will pay the bills. If your parents aren’t wealthy (the millionaire kind of wealthy), early intervention is a necessity to understand filial responsibility laws and how they may affect your family.
Long before the emergence of nursing homes and assisted living facilities, families have been taking care of loved ones regardless of cost, convenience, or care needs. In the so-called simpler times, seniors moved in with adult children and grandchildren gave up time, attention, and personal space to dote on their elders during the final years of life. As time marched on, families began to move to various locations to raise their families and make a living, separating seniors from their adult children and grandchildren. This changed the delivery of senior care with impacts still evolving today.
The state regulatory agency, the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), defines assisted living in Florida as:
“An assisted living facility (ALF) is designed to provide personal care services in the least restrictive and most home-like environment. These facilities can range in size from one resident to several hundred and may offer a wide variety of personal and nursing services designed specifically to meet an individual’s personal needs.”
Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs) are establishments that have historically been referred to as “nursing homes.” They have provided healthcare and housing for the critically and chronically ill by offering 24-hour oversight and services beyond assistance with activities of daily living. Through the years, the term “nursing home” has developed a negative connotation despite being a necessary provider in the continuum of care for the elderly. The evolution of congregate care has deep roots in nursing homes, the original reimagining of the long-ago asylums and sanitoriums, on its way to the less restrictive care we learned about previously in Assisted Living Facilities.
A move to senior living requires accepting that a smaller space is okay. As Dr. Dennis McCullough encourages in his phenomenal book, “My Mother, Your Mother,” take a look around the space your loved one lives in now. What rooms are they actually using? (Rooms used for storing “stuff” do not count!) You most likely will find that they are already downsizing their space to just a room or two.