Senior Care: Options for Couples

As couples age together, at some point one of them may change from being a loyal partner to having to provide or coordinate care for their spouse. This can be difficult when they may be ill or infirm themselves. For those who are able to remain at home, supportive living for seniors can ease the burden of care while they living in the familiar surroundings of their own home for as long as possible. Sometimes a spouse may be afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease or some other debilitating illness. Their partner may still be in good health and able to look after them to some degree at first. Yet even with assistance from fully qualified in-home caregivers, eventually this becomes almost impossible.

Staying Together

If a couple has been together for 40 or 50 years, the thought of being separated, even if one of them needs constant care, is virtually unthinkable. There may no option if one partner requires serious or urgent medical treatment, but many of today’s supportive living facilities try to keep couples together, whenever possible. In some nursing homes and senior living facilities, couples can still live together in the same apartment, with each receiving the care that they require. Housing for seniors can include studios, one or two-bedrooms apartments, and even suites in many retirement communities. Supportive living accommodation includes things such as wheelchair accessibility and specially adapted bathrooms. This is where a philosophy like AgeCare’s “Aging in Place” becomes important – providing couples with the flexibility to be as close to each other as possible.

A Mutual Decision

Even if couples have been together for decades, they’re still not always going to agree on everything and this may certainly be the case when it comes to considering moving to a seniors facility. If one or both are in still reasonably good health and are mobile, they may think they’re too young to consider a seniors community. Some couples might feel that they can’t possibly downsize and still need all the space that have in their home. At many seniors facilities, like AgeCare communities, a staff member consults with senior couples (and often, their kids) to determine how to “right-size” rather than downsize, to make the transition to their new home as smooth as possible.

Seniors Communities

Some elderly people think there may be no privacy at a seniors facility. However, while it’s certainly not the same as living in your own home, you do have privacy and are welcome to socialize with other people as much, or as little, as you like. As the population ages, the number of seniors continues to increase, as does the length of time couples are still together well after retirement age. This is taken into account at today’s senior living communities. While people also think of senior communities as “nursing homes,” seniors residences are not long-term care facilities. They do have access to qualified medical staff, but seniors housing provides a sense of community for those couples who prefer to live in a managed facility, rather than still taking care of household chores and things like cooking by themselves.