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What Exactly IS Adult Day Care?

The recent influx of seniors and retirees into the population has nursing homes severely overcrowded and Americans asking themselves in record numbers: “Just what is adult day care and how can it help me?” To answer this we will look at the problem as logically as we can, in a manner that can be easily understood by anyone, regardless of experience in the field or practical life experience.

Considering that the the Baby Boomer population, (the largest single demographic in the nation for many years now) will hit retirement age in force within the next 3 to 5 years, The United States Department of The Census has determined that by the year 2020, the number of US citizens over the age of 65 will surpass the number of US citizens under the age of 5 for the first time in our country’s history.

These seniors can best be described in 3 basic need categories:

1. Predominantly Healthy – very active and needing no assistance with life skills such as cooking, grooming, bathing and toileting. These seniors suffer no sign of dementia or cognitive dysfunction.

2. Moderately Healthy – Still very active but requiring some life skill assistance. These seniors are largely alert and lucid and can still actively participate in most normal social activities, and most personal care practices. but may require limited assistance with cooking, grooming, bathing, or toileting.

3. Significantly Impaired – These seniors suffer from severe medical conditions or are in the advanced stages of progressively worsening illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s Diseases, or any other chronic, incurable, or ultimately terminal illness which requires constant or almost constant supervision by medical staff and medically trained personnel. These seniors are not capable of providing for most of their significant daily needs and cannot function in most social settings, even with minimal or periodic assistance.

Traditionally in America, when our grandparents, parents, spouses or siblings begin to become a burden on our personal lives, or develop a dependency on us for any or all of life’s basic necessities, we have developed a propensity to deposit them into nursing homes, intermediate care centers, or assisted living repositories.

Leaving moral and ethical issues aside, this fact gets even more significant when we take into account that the resources and facilities which currently exist to serve seniors in America are already inadequate for the existing senior population. Facilities and programs simply do not exist to handle the eminently impending influx of Baby Boomers who are about to retire, most of whom have nothing specifically constructive to do with their time. Those are the exact types of situations and scenarios which adult day care facilities were created to address.

Far less costly than nursing home care, intermediate care, or assisted living participation, adult day care programs are almost always at least partially covered by private insurance and medicare/medicaid, and in many cases, can be provided to qualified registrants absolutely free of out of pocket expenses.

When registered in an adult day care facility, you or your loved ones are picked up directly at your door at a pre-determined time, and transported to an established adult day care facility. Once there, various structured and supervised activities are provided to the registrants to fill their days with purpose and to allow them to mingle amongst their peers. At least one, and often two meals are provided at no additional cost during a typical program day. Since all activities are facilitated by trained staff and take place in a controlled environment, adults fitting either of the first two categories can benefit largely from participation in an adult day care program.

These adult day programs not only provide much needed function and interaction between the registrants, they also provide much needed respite for caregivers and family members who can easily grow exhausted by the increasingly demanding needs of a declining loved one.

Once the daily program is over, the registrants are redelivered directly to their homes, often with a take-home meal or snack for later in the evening sothat they can maintain a sense of self-sufficiency, and not be dependent on someone else at home to prepare an additional meal for them, particularly after returning home fro ma busy day at work or school.

As you can see, there are tremendous benefits to participating in adult day care programs. These programs help keep families together until there is absolutely no other choice, and help to preserve space in Nursing homes and medical care facilities for those people who desperately need that type of elevated care. Many programs have excellent curriculums which allow their participants to remain invigorated and vital in their daily lives and activities, but there is much more work to be done in this field to guarantee our aging loved ones are receiving the very best care and programs they can get. New facilities need to be constructed using state-of-the-art equipment and technology, and curriculums need to be established which can be customized to maximize the experience on an individual basis so that each participant maintains the potential to reap the maximum benefit from their individual adult day care experiences.

Please stay tuned for more on my series of articles pertaining to issues on aging.

Nursing Homes are NOT The Answer…

Over the past 20 years, more and more Americans have developed into a trend of depositing our elderly into nursing homes, assisted living facilities and the like. Recent studies have shown that over half of these seniors do not require the type of intensive medical supervision nursing homes and intermediate care facilities were designed to provide. These facilities were established for seniors who are in, or are very close to hospice level medical condition, and who require intense, 24 hour medical supervision which can only be properly performed by trained medical staff and support personnel.

Despite this exclusive design purpose, over 50% of the seniors who are registered in nursing homes across the country are there today simply because they have no place else to go, or because there is nobody at home who can assist them with basic life needs such as preparing meals, washing clothes, or bathing. These people are not seriously ill, and many can be expected to live for as long as another 20 years or more.

Not even addressing those facilities, which do exist, that function with less than their clients’ best interests in mind, even the noblest of facilities and administrations can’t constantly provide a setting where each patron can excel to the level of his or her own abilities. These facilities must still concentrate the bulk of their efforts and resources on providing the intense medical supervision they were designed to provide, to that other 50% of their residents who desperately need those medical services and constant, around the clock supervision.

Many families place their loved ones into these facilities with the belief that the huge monthly cost they or their insurance pays will go to providing their parent or loved one with an elite level of care. They go away believing that the monthly cost of residency, which often exceeds $15,000.00, goes directly to the resident it is being provided on behalf of, but this is simply not true in ANY such nursing facility. Even worse, the facilities do nothing to set the record straight and many even go as far as to encourage and reinforce that misguided belief. Instead, the facility collects the monthly fees from all it’s residents and distributes it on an as needed basis to those residents the administrative and medical staffs respectively determine are in greatest need of the resources. This means that your loved one, who’s only medical condition might be mild to moderate dementia, will actually benefit very little from the monthly dollars provided to the facility on their behalf.

On the surface, this model seems almost fair and understandable. After all, the day will eventually come when your loved one will need more advanced medical services and at that point, the cost of their care will exceed the monthly monies proved for them by their respective funding source(s). When that happens, funds provided on behalf of other less needy residents will be diverted for their care so it all comes out in the end, right?

Wrong!

The problem with this model is just as easy to see if you make a slight adjustment to your perspective. During those years where your family member was in better overall health and still enjoyed an advanced level of independence, that same roughly $15,000.00 per month could have gone toward providing them with a much greater quality of life than anything provided to anyone in a nursing home setting. Even in our own lives now, imagine your quality of life on a $15,000.00 per month budget. Would you imagine living in anything similar to a nursing home or assisted living type of setting? Surely not.

In fact, the cost of simple companionship and supervision could very easily be provided without even putting a dent in that $15,000.00 per month budget. SO what would you do with the rest of that money? What would you imagine your parents would do? Or your grandparents? Would you or they spend your afternoons watching old movies or playing trivia games in a clean but institutional style multi-purpose room someplace? Hardly. You would want to get your hair and nails done, lounge in a spa, swim in a luxurious indoor pool, play bingo for hours, learn how to prepare amazing bakery delights from accomplished chefs, plant flowers, make bouquets as gifts or decorations, sew, make ceramics, take music lessons, learn how to operate a computer by taking one on one lessons, continue your education through certificate and degree programs, and any number of similar events and activities, NONE of which are continuously available at ANY nursing home or assisted living facility anywhere in America, NOT EVEN IN BEVERLY HILLS!

It is for the these reasons, my hard fought battles with institutions over my mother’s care and my amazement at the list of benefits and services my mother receives in her golden years which made me realize the need for, and then helped me develop the concept for The Golden Years Adult Day Services Centers.

Adult Day Services Centers are NOT nursing homes or assisted living facilities by any means. We will provide 100% free door to door transportation to and from our facility each day. This means that your loved one will be home with you, where they belong, each and every night, but will be with a tremendous amount of their peers during the day while you are at work or school.

All 3 meals are provided to our patrons each and every day and we will be open from 7am to 7pm, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. We will pick your loved one up as early as 5:30am under certain circumstances and can provide for them as late as necessary, even as far as keeping them overnight in our warm respite suite. We realize that there are times that caregivers will want to go away for a weekend or even longer and that it would be impractical to bring an elderly parent or grandparent along.

Our prototype facility, currently being constructed to provide a mall-like atmosphere, will provide our patrons with the freedom to move from one segment to another depending on their individual needs or tastes. Do you prefer to play bingo from 9am to noon? No problem. Horticulture from 2pm to 4pm? Anytime. A manicure from 6pm to 7pm? It’s entirely up to the patron.

For more information on TGY senior Centers, our program, or when you can expect one of our facilities to open near you, please visit our website at www.tgyseniorcenters.com (please forgive the fact that our site is still under construction) or email me personally at kurtdillon@tgyseniorcenters.com and I will be very happy to provide you with as much specific information about our program that you may desire. In the meantime, please stay tuned for more important articles on ArticleBase, our soon to come video podcasts and webinars on YouTube, or check out our blogs at: www.tgyadsc.blogspot.com, and www.tgyadsc.wordpress.com. We look forward to receiving any feedback, whether positive or negative, you might care to provide. ALL ideas are ALWAYS welcome at TGY!

Battling COPD in the Cold Weather Months

Winter and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

As winter draws near, people with respiratory problems are waiting with bated breath. The winter months often cause an exacerbation or acute worsening of COPD symptoms, often leading to other illnesses and even hospitalizations. I have seen first hand that a large percentage of hospital admissions this time of year are COPD patients. Even my mother suffers from COPD.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. It’s believed that by 2010, COPD will move up to third place.

COPD refers to a group of lung diseases such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema that interfere with breathing. These diseases cause lung damage and decrease the lung’s ability to take in oxygen and remove carbon dioxide, resulting in severe breathing difficulties. COPD is progressive, meaning that it grows worse over time. It’s nearly always caused by smoking.

COPD can cause a variety of symptoms, including:

* Chronic, persistent cough
* Increased mucus
* Shortness of breath, especially during physical activity, but can occur at rest
* Wheezing
* A tight feeling in the chest

While there is no cure for COPD, it can be treated. The most important thing to do is to stop smoking. There are several medicines that make breathing easier, including steroids or inhalers. Many people with COPD will eventually need to use supplemental oxygen.

It is important to diagnose COPD as early as possible. Sometimes the subtle symptoms can be dismissed as signs of aging, leaving it undiagnosed until quality of life has rapidly deteriorated and more than 50 percent of lung function has been lost. Unfortunately, many people don’t know they’re at risk, further delaying diagnosis and treatment.

If you or anyone you know is at risk for COPD, see your doctor and learn more about about symptoms and treatment options at the American Lung Association.

The Golden Years – Who and What We are

At The Golden Years, we are in the process of revolutionizing adult day service and bringing it into the 21st century. Our non-residential model activity centers will provide our most valuable citizens with the autonomy and independence to structure their own daily activities, come and go as they wish, and play a vital role in the planning and structure of upcoming events and functions. Our Universally simultaneous model activity center will provide as yet unheard of independence to invigorate members and allow them all of the freedom and autonomy they have worked their entire lives to achieve. Medical supervision, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and recreational therapy are but a few divisions which will also provide plenty of activity and vital resources to those seniors who no longer have the ability to move about independently or to function without supervision. Put simply, no matter what the needs of our members may be, if the are 50 years of age or older, live in any of the four counties of Long Island, New York, or are any age and suffer from a debilitating or incapacitating injury which prevents them from functioning independently, The Golden Years has a warm place for them to come for as many as 12 hours per day, 7 days a week.

Revolutionizing adult day services in America

What sets the Golden years apart from every other adult day services center in America?  Simple… Utilizing our unique VIQQ (pronounced vick) Vitality and Independence Quality Quotient, TGY will offer its patrons the unprecedented option to free themselves from the standardized monthly calendar of events which plagues virtually every other functioning adult day services center in the world.

Utilizing our 100% unique, mall-like prototype facility, The Golden Years will be able to allow our patrons the ability to visit and attend any number of activities at their own time and on their own schedule.  If one of our patrons would prefer to sew from 9:30 until 10:30, rather than play name that tune, they are free to do that since our sewing suite, just like every other suite offered within our facility, will be open simultaneously throughout our operational hours.

Need a manicure?  Not a problem, our full service hair and nail salon is open.  care to cultivate some perennials in our greenhouse?  No problem, it’s open and waiting for you.  Ceramics?  Same answer…always open.  How about Bingo?  If our complex is open, so are each of our segmented suites, including our general library, computer lab, sewing suite, needlework suite and full service salon.

For more information on the revolutionary Golden years protype adult day services center, please feel free to email me directly at: kurtdillon@tgyseniorcenters.com or send a blanket request to: info@tgyseniorcenters.com

Please also follow our other blog at: www.tgyadsc.blogspot.com  Each of our blogs is specifically unique and offers independent insights into the very different aspects of adult day services in America.