Find Housing and/or Care

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Find your way through the maze by starting here:

• Start with a financial assessment. What do you have to work with?
• Assess your loved ones condition and needs. (See assessment checklist.)

Familiarize yourself with the choices:

• Aging in place, at home with modifications, assistive devices and services, such as meal programs
• Senior day centers
• Granny-unit, in-law apartment, or bedroom in your home
• Subsidized senior housing
• Residential care and group homes
• Assisted living facility
• Continuing care retirement communities, which include independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing, and memory care
• Skilled nursing home
• Alzheimer’s or dementia facilities
• Hospice

Familiarize yourself with local services:

• Ask your loved one’s physician for recommendations.
• Ask friends, family, and others for housing and care recommendations
• If your parent is in the hospitalized, speak to the social worker or discharge planner.
• Call a local hospital and ask the social worker for suggestions.
• If there are other aging seniors in your parents’ neighborhood, consider banding together to establish a NORC (Naturally Occurring Retirement Community.

Do the footwork. Visit the facilities you’re interested in. Interview potential home health workers.

• Set an appointment.
• Meet with the director of the home or services.
• Interview the staff.
• Go on a tour of the grounds.
• Ask residents how they like living there.
• Pop in again at a different time, without an appointment.
• Ask for references and call them.
• Call your Long-Term Care Ombudsman and ask about the facility or service.
• Call your state’s health department to see if any complaints have been filed.