Supportive residential care for your seniors could be one tricky decision for you to make. Their mental and physical conditions could greatly influence your choice. Facilities that could be availed for the elders might be on your mind too. Assisted living and memory care communities offer similar supportive care to the elderly occupants, while the latter is specialized for people with Alzheimer’s and other kinds of dementia. We discuss a few points to assist you in weighing your options. You could also visit Rowntree Gardens for consultation.
Trained Staff
Nurses and nursing subordinates make up for a majority of staff in assisted living and memory care facilities. As memory care communities shelter people with dementia, they need staff trained to handle their relevant issues during their stay. Most states need memory care staff to attend regular training to keep them abreast of dementia-related mindsets and issues. Staff in memory care units need to learn strategies to calm and support their distressed residents through these pieces of training. Assisted living communities could do with lesser trained staff comparatively. Their occupants would need support with more general daily living activities like bathing or walking around.
Engagement Activities
Assisted living occupants get the chance to participate in regular activities arranged for their general entertainment. These activity sessions get them involved and attempt to lighten their moods. As they say, happy people are always the healthy ones too. Tailored activity programs are more common in memory care facilities. Residents with dementia welcome more calm and comforting activity routines. That could help stimulate their minds and spirits without contributing to their mental anxiety. Timely interventions through music therapy or similar help mentally impaired seniors to express their distress and get the suggestive support needed.
Daily Meals
Both facilities offer three meals a day to all the residents and encourage social dining habits in them. More curated meal menus are provided for memory care inhabitants taking their nutritional requirements into account. Dementia could cause certain deficiencies in such individuals. For some with dementia, handling forks and knives could seem difficult too. As such, memory care facilities do offer adaptive utensils to such residents.
Staff To Patient Ratio
Typically in assisted living facilities, each care staff could be assigned to look for up to 20 to 25 individual residents. Since occupants in these communities most need support with their basic daily activities, these numbers could work out well. However, an ideal ratio for a memory care unit could be about one care staff per 5 residents. Here the occupants with dementia could need more personalized and extended attention. Staff would need to devote maximum time to each individual and ensure their comfort against any anxiety-related signs.
Suitable Environment
People with dementia might need lesser environmental distractions favoring their dignity and freedom. Such residents could develop memory or judgment issues as well. Memory care facilities provide a suitable and safe living environment to all inhabitants battling dementia-related problems. On the contrary, assisted living environments are more concerned with residents’ safekeeping against external disturbances alone. Additional equipment like door alarms, motion-sensing lighting, and single-touch sinks could be found within memory care communities. These largely increase the safety and independence of memory care occupants.
Cost Commitment
Memory care costs could be on the higher side for your elders when compared to assisted living. Obvious factors are justifying the additional expense for this kind of long-term elderly care. Enhanced security and specialized staff training majorly contribute to this cost buildup. You could realize an overhead of 20-30% on monthly cost commitment for memory care over assisted living for any given area. The location of the facility and the type of living space also account for cost comparisons.
Taking The Decision
The elderly are expected to show signs of age-related memory loss in general. Occasional support to them for their daily living practices could be sufficient even in cases of early dementia. Getting them into an assisted living community could make them feel safe and content. For seniors diagnosed with aggravated dementia, memory care could be better for residential purposes. That way, such seniors could expect superior handling of their issues within more restrictive environments, which might be good for them. Some people would prefer a more gradual switch from assisted living to memory care, depending upon the amount of help they require. You could consider suggestions from medical experts in this regard before a decision. Talking to communities could also help with information about what their facility offers.
