Assisted Living Facility – Myths Busted

Transitioning our loved one from home to a facility is perhaps harder for the family than for the elders themselves. Circumstances, situations, and needs may vary, but family go on a guilt trip when it’s decision time. It is a universal challenge worldwide, but more so in India, due to our inability to dust off the stigma attached. We often associate it with abandonment or running away from responsibilities.

If you go by the data projections, by 2050, the senior population in India will exceed 300 million, constituting almost 20 % of the population. The demand for senior facilities and communities now has begun to receive a high degree of acceptance. Today middle-aged may be the last generation who will feel guilty about sending their parents to a facility, but the same generation will also be the first to be equally open to going to one when their time comes. By then, we will realize it is a dire necessity. For now, there is a myriad of emotions for Indian families due to the stigma and myths surrounding the assisted living facility.

Myths around Senior Care Communities and Facilities:

Let’s look at some myths that delay decisions and accelerate anxieties and stress for families and seniors.

The setup is a replica of the hospital?

While any good facility has round-the-clock medical monitoring, it’s far from a hospital. Here, you do everything for the simplest reasons- happiness and togetherness. The lifestyle is multicultural, celebrations are inclusive, food is home-cooked, and your individual interests are catered to.

Will they lose control over their lives?

When parents have been our teacher, mentor, guide, and friend all rolled into one, it’s hard to imagine them in a place where everything is as per the rule book, and they will have no say in their matters. Any efficient assisted facility provides safety cover, builds a support system, and offers them a place wherein they continue to do what they love.

Possible to adapt at senior age?

This decision time comes as a storm that unsettles the peace at home with fear, uncertainty, and worry for loved ones. But when a facility absorbs them, the changes, routines, and activities are introduced subtly with careful consideration of their choice. A facility focuses on building a senior community wherein each resident is like the spoke of a wheel that may think and behave differently, but the facility is like the hub that keeps them in a common motion and spirit.

Is it Expensive?

Imagine a scenario wherein you are far away in miles, paying the staff wages at parents home, paying utility bills, organizing hospital visits for minor ailments, and traveling down for serious incidences. All this will eventually work out more expensive and worrisome. Assisted Living facilities have medical facilities that will cater to all ailments, their security remains uncompromised, and there is round-the-clock staff to cover up for each other, cutting down many unexpected expenses.

You may like to read this: Safety in Assisted Living: The Priceless Gift for Your Loved Ones

A senior loved one moving into a facility is like an empty nest bird taking its final flight. In most of the cases, it is their own decision and keenness. With kids spread globally, it becomes hard to maintain oneself and home alone. Slowly, home, where they cried, laughed, celebrated, planned, and dreamt, becomes a space they barely drag themselves out. The realization to be part of a community that thrives in the company of alike mindsets, where banters come easy and smiles flash freely with hope in your heart. Facilities are not one size that fits all, it is also circumstances that drive families into the decision.

Compelling reasons for choosing an Assisted living facility:

• Loneliness and fear of the unknown: Electricity blowouts, staff absence, natural disasters, and pandemics can create panic situations when seniors live by themselves. To remotely handle these situations is a crazy affair.
• Absence of family backup support: With nuclear families and geographical distance, it becomes a dire need to keep them safe, secure, monitored, and happy.
• Social needs: This aspect hold the key at facilities, as one forges friendships and bonds with peers, follows passions, gets applauded, and shares laughter. The connections and interactions draw them back to a world they thought they had left behind.
• Medical assistance and special diets: When requirements are special feeds, regular vital checks, bedridden-patient service or wheelchair-bound, a facility works as it has the experience and expertise to handle all special needs. Their monthly doctor appointments are catered and an onsite ambulance is available at all times.
• Memory care: In situations with progressive Dementia, Parkinsons or complete lack of memory, an assisted living facility comes as a savior as their hands are held till the very end. And loving someone forever is caring for someone forever with their safety as utmost priority.

Society needs to make more space for communities to co-exist and flourish. It is also the right time for developers, realtors, and investors to create opportunities and build quality-driven solutions. They need to come up with infrastructure that is more senior-inclusive like railings, safety bars, wheelchair accessibility, ramps, wider hallways, etc.

Oh yes, let’s give them windows where they can sit watch the world go by, and create new memories. It’s important to leave the guilt behind, embrace the reality, work around the best possible solutions, and let them be in charge of their lives under the watchful and loving eyes of the facility and you.