Home Instead Senior Care, Birmingham

Too Close for Comfort

Wednesday, March 31, 2010


It’s happening in the White House and in homes throughout Jefferson and Shelby Counties. When President Obama’s mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, settled in with her family in Washington earlier this year, they became part of a growing national trend.

The increasing number of seniors now living under the same roof with at least one other generation is more than just political news. According to a recent survey conducted for the local company Home Instead Senior Care, 43 percent of adult caregivers in the U.S. ages 35 to 62 reside with the parent, stepparent, or older relative for whom they or someone else in their household provides care.1 The Census Bureau confirms this growing trend: In 2000, 2.3 million2 older parents were living with their adult children; by contrast, in 2007, that number jumped to 3.6 million3 – a 55 percent increase.

The challenges that can arise from intergenerational living prompted Home Instead Senior Care to launch a public education campaign to help families determine if living together is a good idea and to provide tips on how to make such an arrangement work well for seniors as well as their family caregivers if they do decide to combine households. This campaign will help adult children begin to address such issues as the stress of caregiving under one roof, adapting a home for two or more generations and merging household finances.

Several factors are driving this trend, according to Dan Pahos, owner of the local Home Instead Senior Care office. “We see families coming together to share family caregiving duties for economic reasons and emotional support. Sometimes the seniors need care, but in other instances the older adults could be providing care to their own grandchildren. Seniors may feel they need the emotional support of an extended family and, in these difficult economic times, financial assistance. Regardless of the reasons, combining households is a big decision. Some families may decide that maintaining separate residences is the best alternative.”

At the center of the campaign is a handbook, available free from the local Home Instead Senior Care, which addresses the emotional, financial, and comfort and safety aspects of intergenerational living.

The handbook was compiled with the assistance of three national experts: Matthew Kaplan Ph.D., Penn State Intergenerational Programs extension specialist; Adriane Berg, CEO of Generation Bold and a consultant on reaching boomers and seniors; and Dan
Bawden, founder of the CAPS (Certified Aging in Place Specialists) program for the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). A Web site www.makewayformom.com provides additional support and information, including a calculator that will help families compute and compare whether living together or maintaining separate residences is the best financial option. In addition, the Web site features a virtual tour of an intergenerational home where visitors can hear from a real family and see firsthand how they’ve adapted their home.

Penn State’s Matt Kaplan said that families should approach decisions of combining households from a partnership perspective. “Ask yourself, ‘Can I get the whole family behind the idea?’ When a decision is made to combine families, expectations must be set right away. Family members must listen and become engaged in conversation. The more the entire family buys in at the beginning, the more likely they will be to come up with great ideas,” he noted.

“People need independence, but seeking interdependence and family unity are important as well, particularly in today’s hectic and demanding world.”

For more information about Home Instead Senior Care or to order a copy of the free Too Close for Comfort handbook call 205-822-1915 or log on to www.makewayformom.com.
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1. Survey Methodology: The Boomer Project (www.boomerproject.com) completed online interviews with 1,279 U.S. adult caregivers, ages 35-62, with a parent, stepparent or older relative for whom they or someone in their household provides cares. Of the 1,279 family caregivers interviewed, 548 live with the senior receiving care.

2. U.S. Census Bureau; online at http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U&-_lang=en&-redoLog=false&-mt_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_P027&-format=&-CONTEXT=dt

3. U.S. Census Bureau; online at http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-ds_name=ACS_2007_1YR_G00_&-_lang=en&-mt_name=ACS_2007_1YR_G2000_B09016&-format=&-CONTEXT=dt

Activities for the Mind, Body & Soul

Tuesday, March 30, 2010



Join me over the next few weeks as we post 15 activities that you can use to keep your senior loved ones active - mentally, physically, and spiritually.

Below explains why Home Instead Senior Care developed the Activities for the Mind, Body, and Soul cards. To view all activity cards at once or to download them for yourself visit http://www.getmommoving.com/.

Both seniors and adult children agree: staying physically active is a major challenge for older adults, according to research conducted for the Home Instead Senior Care network.* But what does that mean to a senior’s everyday life and to family caregivers looking to help and motivate their loved ones?

For many older adults, inactivity is the first step down a road that leads to frailty and decline. Family caregivers as well as seniors want to do everything possible to keep that from happening. The National Institute on Aging says that seniors are more likely to stay active if they:

1. Think they will benefit from activities
2. Participate in activities they enjoy
3. Believe the activities are safe

Keeping an older adult’s mind, body and social life active can prevent or even reverse frailty, experts say. Family caregivers assisting seniors are in a unique position to help them figure out what activities will work best, according to Stephanie Studenski M.D., M.P.H., an authority and researcher of mobility, balance disorders and falls in older adults, who serves as director of clinical research for the University of Pittsburgh Institute on Aging.

Dr. Studenski says, “A key is simple activities that seniors find pleasurable or enjoyable. If possible, engage frail older individuals in what they’d like to do. And don’t separate the mind, body and soul activities. Seniors need to stay active doing things they find meaningful and helpful to others, even if they can no longer get out of the house."

The National Institute on Aging Exercise and Physical Activity Guide points out that regular exercise and physical activity are important to the physical and mental health of almost everyone, including older adults. They can help maintain and improve endurance, strength, balance and fitness; help improve the ability to do things; help manage and prevent diseases like diabetes, breast and colon cancer, osteoporosis and heart disease; and help reduce feelings of depression. Being active may also help improve mood and may maintain some aspects of cognitive function, such as the ability to shift quickly between tasks. Emerging data also suggests that engaging in social and productive activities may help maintain well-being.

*The Boomer Project (www.boomerproject.com) completed online interviews with 523 seniors and 1,279 adult caregivers, ages 35-62, with a parent, stepparent or older relative for whom they or someone in their household provides care.

Fear of Fraility Continued...

Monday, March 29, 2010

In a women’s study released last summer, researchers at Columbia and Johns Hopkins Universities discovered the important role activity plays in the fight against frailty and shed new light on what causes the condition.

So how do family caregivers know what to look for? Following, from Stephanie Studenski, M.D., M.P.H., University of Pittsburgh geriatrician and researcher, and Home Instead Senior Care, are the signs that a senior might be becoming frail:

Change. If a senior has always been interested in talking to the neighbors, reading the newspaper or volunteering and is withdrawing from those interests, suggest your loved one see a doctor.
Inactivity. If your senior suddenly becomes less active, investigate what could be the cause.
Slowing down. If grandpa always used to have a bounce in his step and now, suddenly, trudges along, that’s a bad sign.
Loss of appetite and weight. A senior who always had a healthy appetite and doesn’t any more should be of concern to their loved ones.
Unsteadiness. Loss of balance comes with aging but an increasing unsteadiness is a sign that something could be wrong.

To find out how you can help keep a senior active, contact Home Instead Senior Care for a free set of Get Mom Moving Activity Cards: “Activities for the Mind Body and Soul.”

Fear of Frailty ~ Lack of Activity Threatens Local Seniors’ Independence

Friday, March 26, 2010

Fear of frailty is of paramount concern not only for Birmingham and surrounding area seniors, but those local adults ages 35 to 62 – many of whom are daughters – worried about the health and safety of their older loved ones. That’s according to results of a recent national survey of seniors and adult children that reveals staying physically active is a major challenge for seniors.


Lack of activity can lead to a downward spiral of poor health resulting in frailty, a condition that threatens the mind, body and social life of older adults, according to senior care experts.


“We regularly see seniors who are literally trapped in their homes because they are too weak to perform many of the activities they need to remain safe and independent, or to even enjoy life,” said Dan Pahos, owner of the Home Instead Senior Care office in Birmingham. “That’s why staying active is viewed by so many as vital to healthy aging. Differences in perceptions between family caregivers and seniors can make addressing these issues challenging for many families.”

This problem is what prompted Home Instead Senior Care to develop the Get Mom Moving Activity Cards and Web site at www.getmommoving.com, both designed to help keep seniors engaged and fit. These resources provide the tools by which seniors can fight frailty.


A national study conducted for the Home Instead Senior Care® network found that 74 percent of seniors 65 and older say that staying physically active is a major challenge. Adult caregivers see the problem as well: 81 percent of adult caregivers listed staying physically active as a top challenge for seniors. That challenge leads to another worry: 90 percent of seniors in the survey say their greatest fear is loss of independence.*


Frailty can be difficult to define, but most know it when they see it, said Stephanie

Studenski, M.D., M.P.H., one of the nation’s foremost authorities and researchers of mobility, balance disorders and falls in older adults, and director of clinical research for the University of Pittsburgh Institute on Aging. Medical professionals describe frailty as a syndrome of weakness, fatigue and decline in physical activity that may be triggered by hormonal or inflammatory changes or chronic disease states. For some, frailty results from a heart attack or stroke, while another senior might experience falls and weight loss.


Studenski and her colleagues conducted a series of focus groups with health care providers and family caregivers about how they perceive frailty in an effort to better

identify the condition. “I think the thing that was most striking to me was that many family members we talked with perceived that an older person is getting more or less frail based more on social and psychological factors rather than physical factors. Doctors, on the other hand, focused on the physical manifestations in an older adult,” she noted.

Dr. Studenski said that frailty can be both prevented and reversed by activity. “One of the core ideas in aging is that there are underlying problems in the body’s self-correcting mechanism. For example, when a young person is bleeding, the body self-corrects by increasing the heart rate. But older adults, because of medication or health problems, may have lost the ability to self-correct by being able to increase their heart rate. Through activity, though, seniors can build both physical and mental reserves that can help their bodies better tolerate problems that come with aging.”

So, in a very real way, family caregivers who can encourage and integrate physical, mental and social activities in seniors’ lives are helping them ward off frailty and stay healthy. And that addresses seniors’ biggest fear of losing their independence as well. “This topic is at the heart of the concerns that we see each day in the lives of seniors and those who care for them,” said Home Instead Senior Care’s Pahos. “Fear of frailty keeps seniors worried about whether they can stay home.”


# # #


Fear of frailty is of paramount concern not only for Birmingham and surrounding area seniors, but those local adults ages 35 to 62 – many of whom are daughters – worried about the health and safety of their older loved ones. That’s according to results of a recent national survey of seniors and adult children that reveals staying physically active is a major challenge for seniors.

Lack of activity can lead to a downward spiral of poor health resulting in frailty, a condition that threatens the mind, body and social life of older adults, according to senior care experts.

“We regularly see seniors who are literally trapped in their homes because they are too weak to perform many of the activities they need to remain safe and independent, or to even enjoy life,” said Dan Pahos, owner of the Home Instead Senior Care office in Birmingham. “That’s why staying active is viewed by so many as vital to healthy aging. Differences in perceptions between family caregivers and seniors can make addressing these issues challenging for many families.”

This problem is what prompted Home Instead Senior Care to develop the Get Mom Moving Activity Cards and Web site at www.getmommoving.com, both designed to help keep seniors engaged and fit. These resources provide the tools by which seniors can fight frailty.

A national study conducted for the Home Instead Senior Care® network found that 74 percent of seniors 65 and older say that staying physically active is a major challenge. Adult caregivers see the problem as well: 81 percent of adult caregivers listed staying physically active as a top challenge for seniors. That challenge leads to another worry: 90 percent of seniors in the survey say their greatest fear is loss of independence.*

Frailty can be difficult to define, but most know it when they see it, said Stephanie

Studenski, M.D., M.P.H., one of the nation’s foremost authorities and researchers of mobility, balance disorders and falls in older adults, and director of clinical research for the University of Pittsburgh Institute on Aging. Medical professionals describe frailty as a syndrome of weakness, fatigue and decline in physical activity that may be triggered by hormonal or inflammatory changes or chronic disease states. For some, frailty results from a heart attack or stroke, while another senior might experience falls and weight loss.

Studenski and her colleagues conducted a series of focus groups with health care providers and family caregivers about how they perceive frailty in an effort to better

identify the condition. “I think the thing that was most striking to me was that many family members we talked with perceived that an older person is getting more or less frail based more on social and psychological factors rather than physical factors. Doctors, on the other hand, focused on the physical manifestations in an older adult,” she noted.

Dr. Studenski said that frailty can be both prevented and reversed by activity. “One of the core ideas in aging is that there are underlying problems in the body’s self-correcting mechanism. For example, when a young person is bleeding, the body self-corrects by increasing the heart rate. But older adults, because of medication or health problems, may have lost the ability to self-correct by being able to increase their heart rate. Through activity, though, seniors can build both physical and mental reserves that can help their bodies better tolerate problems that come with aging.”

So, in a very real way, family caregivers who can encourage and integrate physical, mental and social activities in seniors’ lives are helping them ward off frailty and stay healthy. And that addresses seniors’ biggest fear of losing their independence as well. “This topic is at the heart of the concerns that we see each day in the lives of seniors and those who care for them,” said Home Instead Senior Care’s Pahos. “Fear of frailty keeps seniors worried about whether they can stay home.”

# # #

* The Boomer Project (www.boomerproject.com) completed online interviews with 523 seniors and 1,279 adult caregivers, ages 35-62, with a parent, stepparent or older relative for whom they or someone in their household provides care.