Caring for My Senior (01)

Senior Care Across the Miles
Taking care of an aging senior can be hard enough; but for those who aren’t as close to their parent or parents to provide home care, here are six tips that help children of elder seniors take care of them. You don’t have to put your parent in an assisted living center. Tips include: accurately assessing the needs of your senior parent, researching home care resources, asking siblings or other family members for help, talking to your senior parent and making sure to get all records to fill out caretaking paperwork, whether you move your parent into an assisted living center or choose in-home care.

Elder Care: First Steps
Caring for an aging parent, elderly spouse, domestic partner or close friend presents tough challenges. Often, you're not sure of the next step, or even the first step. This article from Aging Parents and Elder Care is a step-by-step guide to help you begin your caregiving journey.

Medicare and More: Resources for Elderly Seniors
If you are looking for private or government programs to help your aging parent pay for prescription drugs, health care, utilities, and other needs, check out this site. It includes Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage (Part D), and more, and is easy enough for elder seniors to use. Eldercare doesn’t have to be hard to get—just use this regularly updated site to find new programs that will help cover senior health care needs. Just type in requested information, which takes about 10 to 15 minutes, and you’ll be in touch with resources to help you care for your aging parent.

Preparing For Disaster: Education for Families and Seniors
A disaster could strike at any time. Are you and your family prepared? What about your senior family members, neighbors, friends and relatives? It’s important to have a family disaster plan in place and a kit readily available in preparation for a hurricane, tornado or any other kind of disastrous storm. This site provides the tools necessary to create a plan, put it into action, create a disaster kit, and other educational materials. Each resource is in PDF format for easy reading, printing and sharing. You will also find links to several valuable information sites such as the Red Cross and FEMA.

The Importance of Nutrition and the Elderly
Proper nutrition has been a growing problem in families for years—particularly with senior citizens—for a myriad of reasons ranging from lack of readily available educational resources to the inability to shop independently for necessities regularly. In an effort to bridge that educational gap, this site provides an article containing a wide range of information covering basic nutritional guidelines from the food pyramid, information about vitamin absorption, serving suggestions (how many servings and how much each should contain) and information covering healthy caloric intake. Links to other health-related topics, nutritional topics and vitamins and herbs are also available.

Food Safety Education for the Elderly
Many may or may not realize this, but as we age, everything about our bodies, our senses and our ability to ward off illnesses changes. Senses are changed by medications and we become more susceptible to illnesses that don’t seem as easy to remedy. This is also true for food. Food-borne illnesses are a real threat and, without the proper education, improper handling of food is very risky. Use this site to learn safe food handling, temperature guidelines and food delivery safety precautions. Arming yourself with these resources will keep you protected and reduce the risk of contracting a food-borne illness.