Fall in love with live-in care

At Promedica24, we are unsurprisingly very passionate about live-in care. We believe it offers not just an alternative choice to a care home for a loved one who needs additional care and support, but that the majority of older people who need care and support and have the space to accommodate a live-in carer would prefer to remain in their own home.

Despite this, many families often don’t realise live-in care is a viable option for their loved one simply because it’s not as well known about as care homes and domiciliary care. Armed with information and choices, many older people and their families fall in love with the idea of live-in home care for many different reasons, with the following being just a few:

• The ability to keep living in a family home that may have accommodated many generations of family members and is filled with memories of those loved ones.
• Remaining surrounded by personal possessions, many of which may have huge sentimental value, not to mention items that the person who needs care finds incomparably comfortable and comforting like a favourite chair or bed.
• The chance for an ageing couple to continue living together without the need for one spouse to provide all of the care that their partner needs, or for the couple to be split up by a care home move.
• The opportunity to remain living with a family pet, rather than that pet having to be rehomed because it can’t move with the person to a care home.
• The maintenance of the privacy and dignity that can only be afforded by the person’s own home and cannot be replicated in communal environments.
• The ability for the person to exercise independence, choice and control over all aspects of their daily routine – for example choosing when to get up, go to bed, eat, bath or shower, pursue hobbies or go out.
• The person continuing to have responsibility and autonomy over the running of their home (if they choose this) and the sense of pride and purpose that this can provide for those who want it.
• Being able to continue to buy and eat familiar food, cooked by the person or with support from their live-in carer, with all the enjoyable elements that entails, from sourcing favourite recipes from old family cookbooks to appetite-inducing cooking smells and eating off of familiar plates.
• The chance to continue to host family gatherings from the person’s own home.
• The potential for the person to live out their life in their own home, something that 71% of people are known to prefer for their end-of-life care.

With so many reasons to love live-in care we believe it is an option that many more families may want to consider in 2020. We know from our own clients that many were hugely relieved when they had engaged us to provide the care they needed meaning that a move into a care home was no longer required.

Experiencing live-in care, free from worries about how health and care needs will be met, often results in a person’s self-esteem and confidence being boosted. Never underestimate how much those crucial elements of maintaining choice, control and independence are for an older person and/or someone living with health problems who may otherwise feel marginalised and ignored.

The other huge benefit to live-in care is, of course, the companionship of a live-in carer, which means loneliness is alleviated, friendship often blossoms, and a person may well achieve far more than the goals they originally set in their personalised care plan. It is this highly individualised nature of live-in care that means most people who know and understand it are completely in love with it, and we hope that if you or your family need care and support now or in the future you will be too.

If you would like to find out more or access our services, please visit promedica24.co.uk to use our online chat service. You can also get in touch with our team on 0800 086 8686 or by sending an email to care@promedica24.co.uk. If you’d like to assess your care and support needs rapidly online, we have a tool available for you to do this.