CAREGIVER TO A NEW SPACE
THE DECISION TO MOVE By Carrie Vittitoe | Photos by Melissa Donald
T
he reasons why individuals decide to move into a senior living community are as different as the people themselves. Their personalities and experiences also inform why they choose one senior community over another. For Donna Peak, a resident at Masonic Homes of Kentucky’s Miralea independent living, seeing her father deal with Alzheimer’s disease played a major role when it came time to make a decision about her own future. With her two siblings, Donna had to navigate how to best care for their father. “We ended up moving him three times because we were always trying to find the level of care he needed,” she says. When his needs changed, he would have to be moved, sometimes on short notice which was extremely stressful. While her dad passed away in 2010, the experience really impacted Donna and made her latch onto the continuum of care concept, which she learned about in late 2017. “If that was available for Dad, he could have moved into one place and then been moved to different levels of care as professionals recognized that need,” she says. Donna began attending marketing events to begin what she intended as a many years-long process of deciding on a community and then eventually moving in. She thought she would move at age 80. However, in December 2019, she thought, “What am I waiting for?” At 74, she decided she was tired of living by herself. Even though she had long been a homeowner and proud to be independent, she ultimately determined that she wanted more socialization. “The socialization is what really drew me to make the move when I did. Anything I wanted to do I was having to reach out. You have to initiate your own activities whereas here there are planned activities and you just walk down and join in,” she says. “I’m not alone here.” Determining the differences between assisted living, personal care, and skilled care can be cumbersome to people who don’t work in the industry. Connor Joffe, executive director at The Grand, says doing background research on the types of care in Kentucky is imperative. “Unfortunately, sometimes some buildings will accept a resident who is borderline between levels of care or the whole picture hasn’t been presented,” he says, which means senior residents may move into a community that doesn’t offer them what they 44 Spring 2021 / TodaysTransitionsNow.com
Patricia McTigue decided to live at a senior living community which her sister helped her choose before she moved to Louisville.
need, requiring families to hire additional caregivers or worse, having to move the resident repeatedly. Families need to be very clear when communicating what their loved one can and can’t do and what his or her needs are prior to an assessment, which communities do before placing a new resident. It is also critical for families to ask lots of questions, including asking whether the professionals think their loved one is borderline. “The more questions you ask, the better,” Connor says. Hope Janssen, sales director at Masonic Homes of Kentucky, says a view to the future and what could be down the road are important for individuals or families to consider when shopping for a community. Just as important, though, is looking at the health situation now, especially for a married couple. “If you have a husband and wife couple, it is extremely normal for one of them to be in physically better shape or for one of them to need more mental/cognitive support. This has become something that is extremely common,” Hope says. Some communities are adding different levels of care and