Having Mom Move In: Is it the Same as Providing Senior Care?

Senior Care in Dallas,  TX – Mom will Still Need a Considerable Amount of Care once she Moves in

At first the idea was simple enough: your mother needed help at home and since she lived a little too far away from you, you told her that she should move in with you. Now that she’s finally agreed (albeit reluctantly), you’re wondering whether this is considered providing senior care.

Maybe you’re trying to determine if you can get some money through the government for helping her. Maybe she has continually talked about not wanting any type of home care for elderly patients because she didn’t want to be treated like a patient. Maybe there are other issues at play here.

She didn’t want to move away from her friends, but she also didn’t want to continue struggling with her basic care at home, living alone. You had given her the option of moving in with you or hiring a professional elderly health care provider and she chose to move in with you.

So, is this considered senior care? Not in the traditional sense of the word. When you’re talking about home health care services, you will be talking about having a person go to the home of the patient to provide support and care for him or her. That could be in the form of a home care aide or a visiting nurse, for example.

You’re just having your mother move into your home and even though you may provide some level of support for her, the main focus for you was to make sure that your mother was safe at home, and you assume that is now going to be achieved.

In truth, changing addresses isn’t going to change the overall situation. Your mother is still going to need the proper level of support and she may need someone to help her get around the house, get out of bed some mornings, get dressed, and she may need assistance getting into and out of the bathroom or shower. You might not have considered the safety of your home as opposed to where she had been living.

You might have brought a shower seat from her old home to yours, but is that enough? Are you going to be willing and able to support her with all of the things she needs help with?

Just because your mother moved in with you, that doesn’t mean she no longer requires any other type of senior care. She may even need MORE care now that she’s in an unfamiliar home, trying to get around furniture she isn’t used to. It may be a good start, but consider hiring professional senior care to help mom with her daily activities that you may not have time for, even in your own home.