hen a young family needs temporary care for a child, resources can be as close as an older child in the home, a caring neighbor or a favorite teen baby-sitter.
But what options exist when a grandpa or grandma living in the home requires attentive care, but the live-in caregiver needs time to run errands, to drive to an out-of-town appointment or simply needs a break?
Kelly Finley, the social services professional at Salem Home in Hillsboro, and Venita Schroeder, director of nursing, want people to know that they stand ready to assist through Salem’s adult day-care program.
“If a family just needs to run some errands, (the elder) can come here for a couple of hours, and they can get their errands done and come back and pick them up,” Finley said. “It makes it very convenient so they don’t have to worry about what they are going to do with mom or grandma or grandpa.”
Schroeder added, “Salem Home is a good place, and we want to make sure that people keep us in mind.”
Finley said the objective of Salem’s program is to provide a cost effective service that can prevent, shorten or delay the need for institutional care or expand care choices available to individuals and their families.
“We not only do adult day care; we also do respite care, which can be from five days to 30 days,” Finley said. “They would have to have doctor’s orders, which is the same for the adult day-care program.”
As part of the admissions process, Salem staff will conduct an assessment interview with the client and are willing to do the assessment in the client’s home, if need be.
“We’re going to find out what they like, what they prefer, if they like to take naps, what they like to eat so that their care is person-centered, not institutional,” Finley said.
“We focus holistically— not only on the clinical part, but also the emotional, spiritual and psycho-social well-being of the person.”
Once arrangements are made through the client’s doctor, families can drop off their elder for the amount of time needed, from relatively short increments of two to four hours, to a full day and even overnight.
“In most cases, it would start around 8 in the morning, but things like that are always negotiable,” Schroeder said. “If we have somebody who has an appointment and they say, ‘I really have to be there at 8 o’clock—can I bring mom and dad in at 7:30?’ That definitely would be negotiable.”
Salem’s fee schedule for a typical half-day (four to five hours) is $80. A full day (over five hours) would be $140, which is the current rate of a private room at Salem at Care Level 3.
“There might be some people where we would need to give them some medications while they’re here, or maybe you have somebody who needs help to the bathroom, maybe they want them to have a shower while they here, or a tub bath,” Schroeder said.
“The fee is all inclusive—there are no added fees if they would get a shower, for example, or a meal.”
The program is intended for people age 60 and older who don’t have significant limitations.
“If they are an elopement risk, where they wander a lot, we would have to (decline) just because we are not set up for that,” Finley said. “Other than that, we can pretty much meet the needs of anyone.”
Schroeder said adult day-care can be an important move for the in-home caregiver as much as the person being cared for.
“Maybe they can’t afford to bring mom or dad into the nursing home, but yet the caregiver is just worn out,” she said. “We see that quite often with caregivers. They don’t know what to do because they are strapped at home with their husband or wife, or mother or dad, or whomever it is.
“They don’t even know if they have any options for them.”
Finley said the program doesn’t have geographical limitations in regard to the elder or the doctor who prescribes the order.
For more information about adult day-care at Salem Home, call Finley at 620-947-1479 (office) or 620-755-6104 (cell).
