Episcopal Church Home - Lousiville

As our country’s population continues to skew older, we’re facing a nationwide shortage of qualified geriatric care providers.

That’s a shame not only from the standpoint that some seniors may not be receiving all the affordable care they need, but also because elder care is rewarding field.

If you’re looking for a retirement community, personal care home or memory care in Louisville for yourself or for an older loved one, how do you begin your search? How do you compare quality of retirement care?

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) make it easy for you. The government agency’s Nursing Home Compare (NHC) ratings are now conveniently posted online, so you can quickly narrow your search to only those retirement care centers that meet the most rigorous safety inspection and quality of care standards.

If you’re an Episcopal Church Home resident, or if your senior loved one is living here in our Louisville retirement community, there’s probably a special personal care provider or ECH team member who’s made you and your family feel especially welcome, cared for and honored.

She may have been a nurse. He may have been a patient care assistant or a physical therapist. She may have been the person who asked you how your day was, then sat and listened to you, after delivering a meal.

Alzheimer’s disease and age-related dementia diagnoses have affected millions of American families. Here in Kentucky alone, an estimated 70,000 seniors are living with Alzheimer’s, and that number is projected to grow 22.9 percent by 2025.

That creates a critical need for caregiver support, for community-based caregiver resources and for residential memory care in our area. If a dementia diagnosis has touched your family, it’s important for you to know you’re not alone. And there are plenty of people and organizations willing to help.

As Louisville residents know all too well, mid- to late summer temperatures here routinely reach into the high 80s and 90s. On top of that, the humidity can be stifling. Heat emergencies are quite a challenge indeed for seniors living in Kentucky and Southern Indiana.

Cole T. is a 45-year-old married man, living with his stay-at-home wife, Lisa, and three school-age children in Pewee Valley. He’s a line foreman for the same Louisville-based aluminum tube manufacturer he began working for as a line technician fresh out of vocational school.

He knows everything about his business, but there are few opportunities for Cole outside his industry and his company has no fabrication facilities west of the Mississippi. Moreover, as American manufacturing jobs continue to dry up, he’s worried about making it to retirement with his income stream intact. But he loves his job, so he keeps his nose clean and takes everything a day at a time.

Online scams. Telephone fraud. Adware, malware, computer viruses and worms. Bogus tech support. There are so many ways that seniors are targeted by fraud.

And not all of frauds are financial. Some, like the fake news phenomenon — including hyper-partisan propaganda (right and left), misdirecting “clickhole” sites, clickbait leads, and satire pieces misrepresented as responsible reporting — take advantage of those who aren’t tech-savvy, and on people’s fears or core beliefs, in order to motivate them to think or act a certain way.

It’s a brave, new digital world. How can family caregivers protect their older loved ones? Let’s explore that questions.

Stress, fatigue and burnout are significant challenges for many who take care of their aging loved ones. According to AARP, as many as one in three family caregivers report high levels of stress.

Often, caregiving becomes a full-time job for spouses or adult children — especially if the senior they’re looking after has Alzheimer’s, dementia or age-associated memory loss.

If you’re a family caregiver, you need to be cognizant of the signs that you’re getting overwhelmed.

When senior loved ones require more daily personal care than they could safely receive at home, Louisville families often wonder how they should choose a senior living community to meet their needs.

The selection process isn’t easy — nor should it be. It should be one that is careful and considered. You want to be sure that the provider your family chooses is not only providing quality, person-centered care, but that your loved one is happy with the arrangement and will have everything he or she needs to continue living a rich, fulfilling retirement.

A growing number of Kentucky seniors — an estimated 95,000 by 2025 — are living with Alzheimer’s or some other form of age-related dementia. A significant portion of them live alone, without even a family caregiver to look after them.