Gail Lawley - Its Your Move: Choices for Senior Living - Will You Age in Your Home or at a Retirement Home?

All Rights Reserved
v4.0

ISBN: 978-0-9898343-0-8

Website:

http://MoveChoices.com

Cover Design: Kelly Lawley

Published in the United States

The opinions Expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author . The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

Electronic version created using Pressbooks.com

I want to thank Margaret and Hu Bath, Joyce Hardin, Ernie Schwam, Ann and Lou Roscoe, Dorothy Jackson, Suzanne Kavanaugh, Anne Bonnand other residents, friends and workers at various facilities for their time and input.

In addition, I am very grateful to the administrators who took time out of their busy schedules to answer my interview questions: Cydney Turner at Handmaker; Gale Morgan and Kathryn L Brod of Mather Lifeways; Tim Carmichael with La Posada, and many others who answered e-mail questions and phone calls.

A special thanks to Elizabeth Ohm for her advice on content organization, grammar and reference formatting, Curt and Betsy Blanchard and the others who made title suggestions. A special thanks to Craig Smith for encouraging me to publish these lists.

Chapter 2 Types of Housing

List #1 What things are most important to me?

List #2 Adult Congregate Housing

List #3 Independent Living

List #4 CCRC Continuing Care Retirement Communities

List #5 Personal-Care Home

List #6 Assisted Living

List #7 Family Help

List #8 Adult Daycare Facilities

List #9 Adult Daycare

List #10 Hiring Help

List #11 Nursing Facility

Chapter 3 Other Considerations

List #12 Pre-screening Facility Costs

List #13 Cost Comparisons: Present and Projected

List #14 Projected Costs: Home-care

List #15 Geriatric Care Manager

List #16 Hiring Home Care Helpers

Chapter 4 Making the Move

List #17 Availability, Finances, Complaints

List #18 Facility Costs

List #19 Initial Cost

List #20 Conveniences

List #21 Company Info, Rankings, and Legal

List #22 Visits

List #23 Ask the Residents

List #24 Observe the Staff

List #25 Exterior Aesthetics

List #26 Interior Aesthetics

List #27 Unit Info

List #28 Special Needs

List #29 Medical and Social Services

List #30 Dining

List #31 Amenities and Guests

List #32 Activities

List #33 Before Admission to a Nursing Home

Please check my website frequently as I will add information, places and articles frequently http://MoveChoices.com.

The purpose of this book is to provide you with a guide to resources that will help you decide how, why, and where you want to live as you age. I hope it will help you decide whether to stay at home or help you to find a place that fits your lifestyle, desires, and budget.

Please take the time to look at the resources I have listed in the appendices, and/or to call them and get their literature.

As you know, where youll live for the rest of your life is not a decision to be made lightly. Its well worth giving up a few golf games, tennis sessions or lunches with your friends to have the rest of your life plannedas well as you can plan at this point in your life.

My experiences and research made me realize how much easier this process is if its done while youre still healthy.

According to Home Instead, we have a Senior Care Information Gap:

The Home Instead study found seniors and their adult children:

Know little about the care options that are available

Are badly misguided about the costs of those options

Are inadequately informed about what financial resources are needed to cover the cost of care.

The research I did for this book included reading all the books listed in the references. I especially recommend:

Long-Term Care: How to Plan and Pay for It, by Joseph L. Matthews.

Where Should I Live When I Retire? A Guide to Continuing-Care Communities, by Bernice Kohn Hunt.

I know its weird for an author to recommend another book, but these have a different focus from my book. My focus is decision-making and comparing facilities; their focus is planning and paying for what you choose.

There is so much good information in these books, that I urge you to buy a copy or find a copy at your local library.

I interviewed strangers and friends, singles and couples who had moved into some sort of retirement community or decided to stay at home. Some had lived with family and then moved to a community. I interviewed others who had performed home care, and some of my family who had assisted a relative when their paid home care workers left or didnt show up, and so on. I began my lists at least 15 years ago, and have been refining them ever since.

I interviewed administrators and staff from various institutions in the Tucson area, and some who were part of a nation-wide organization.

If youre an adult child reading this for your parents, I hope they are more communicative about their wishes than my parents were. Its difficult to help them when they dont tell you what they want, and/or when they dont want to recognize that they need help.

Keep asking what they want.

In writing this book, my hope is that I will save you some of the problems and inconveniences that my friends and relatives went through during their move to a retirement community, or after their decision to remain in their home.

If youre reading this for yourself, congratulations! Your family and friends should be proud that youre recognizing the realities of aging.

Organization

The book is organized for the most part in the order in which decisions must be made. Early Planning focuses on first decisions that should be made and their timing, with a general outline of available choices. Types of Housing is just that: descriptions of retirement living choices with levels of care offered. Lists are furnished here and throughout the book so the individual and his/her family will, in the best of all possible worlds, not forget any item of importance. Other Considerations includes more detailed lists as well as options such as outside help in making choices. In Making the Move still more detailed lists are offered, with items that might be easily overlooked. Finally, reference lists including agencies, apps for electronic devices such as iPhone, iPad and Android, books, businesses, and websites are presented.