What Residential Care Facilities Can Teach You About Home Health Care Safety

Residential care facilities provide senior and long-term care in a way that differs from many other senior living programs. Looking at how they serve seniors can help you see some best practices for taking care of a loved one at home.

How Residential Care Facilities Work

You can find residential care facilities in neighborhoods across the country. For the most part, they're normal houses with some modifications for providing safe living conditions for seniors. These houses have a focus on independence while maintaining a safe atmosphere. They're mostly non-medical, although a practitioner may make routine visits to check on residents.

It provides living conditions that closely match living in a house in a neighborhood, as opposed to living in an institution of some sort. Caretakers provide residents with housekeeping services and personal care assistance.

How Residential Care Facilities Deal With Safety

Living in a house comes with many inherent dangers to seniors and people who need care. To that end, residential care homes must make modifications that make the house safer for those that live in it. It's these features that you can look to if you want to make changes to your home or that of your loved one.

Wider doorwaysWidening doorways for those with walkers and wheelchairs can help them maneuver around the house without impediment.

Handrails and grab bars - Adding handrails and grab bars can help prevent falls and increase mobility around the house. They're especially important for stairs, bathrooms, and halls.

Nonslip flooring - You should add mats and other nonslip flooring options in any area where a slipping hazard exists. Once again, the bathroom is of the utmost importance for these. But also, places like the kitchen and anywhere with open space.

Increase lighting – You'll want as much light to see by in the home as possible. Motion sensors can help as well so that lights turn on without someone needing to search for a switch in the dark.

Communication devices – Every room should have a means for someone to make an emergency call.

In residential care facilities, seniors must have the ability to travel from any area of the house to another with no problems whatsoever. You should always seek to foster that same level of independence, even in small ways.

For example, you can install sockets at a level seniors can easily reach. Or, try rearranging appliances so that there's no need for seniors to go out of their way to use them.

How You Can Help Care Providers Help You

Whether you provide the majority of the care, or you make use of home health care providers, you should seek to make life for your loved one easier. It will allow you or the care provider to focus more on other important aspects of care.

Residential care facilities work because they aim to give seniors a familiar home-like environment while allowing them the freedom to live on their own terms. You can do many of the same things for your loved one, even if you only make the changes a little at a time.

For more information, consider contacting places like United Senior Services senior home health care to see if they can meet your needs in this area.


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