Quote:
Originally Posted by gap2415
A friend sent me a clipping about college students in the Netherlands getting a free room in Senior Centers. They had to spend 30 hrs a month with one senior as a condition. They have found that it works amazingly well as so many elders were alone with no family and great relationships were formed.
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Great idea. There are really two problems
1) As we get older, someone will likely have to take over making many of our decisions and/or manage our financial affairs. If you expect that will never ever be the case, you sadly mistaken. My college room mate tried to get his parents to realize that this might be a problem - their solution was that their circle of friends promised to take care of each other. By the time his father developed dementia (his mother had had it for quite some time), all of their friends were dead, in a nursing home, or incapacitated.. The children finally moved his dad to a nursing home in Michigan where the only child who was retired could look after him.
My dad was furious and raged at me the day I had to put him in the nursing home. Once her adjusted to the fact that "I had the watch" and gave him regular reports, he relaxed. However, we had had 20 years of periodic discussions ago their wishes and I knew that I was doing what they had told me that they wanted. Sometimes, someone who cares or knows what they want has to make hard decisions.
2) The second problem is loneliness. There are a lot of seniors in assisted living and nursing homes with no one left. It's not just the childless - there are more than a few who outlive children, friends, spouses, and essentially everyone in their world. I know of situations at the nursing home where my mother is where there is no family left to buy things for residents or visit. Staff and a few of the families who are aware of the problem often chip in for things like Christmas gifts.
As many activities as the various care facilities have, at some point, many of the residents are no longer able to participate due to physical or mental issues.
Even the good places can't solve all of the problems. The cost of providing one-on-one care and companionship for each resident would boost the cost up into the $30-40K/month range. So they rely on volunteers.
In the small town in WV where we lived just prior to moving to TV, the nursing home had community groups in most days of the weeks. Churches, scouting groups, schools, fraternal and veteran groups and neighbors came in.
What can you do? If you have a neighborhood social club or some other organization looking for a project, contact one of the area nursing homes (especially the ones doing "long term" rather than "short-term-rehab" care. Talk to the activity director who would probably be happy to have you come sing or sit and read, or do most anything with some residents. Don't just wait for Christmas - everybody does stuff then. Do it for Memorial Day or July 4th or Labor Day or "just because day..."
Sorry this ended up being long.