Family Is Everything: Get Quality Home Care For Your Elderly Relatives With These 3 Tips

Audrey Barton
3 min readNov 2, 2020

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How much do you value family?

Family lies at the core of society. It’s in the family that many of us learn our first lessons in loyalty, trust, love, respect, friendship, civility, and looking out for each other — lessons that continue to be passed on from generation to generation.

At the helm of the family are the elders. They impart the wisdom they have acquired over the years to the younger ones, and because of the sacrifices they made for us and our love for them, we take care of them. Some of them live with us and others live by themselves or in assisted care facilities.

Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Sunday dinners, birthdays, and vacations are some family events that many of us look forward to. However, because of the Coronavirus pandemic, 2020 has changed the way we live our lives. Although we’ve been in this social distancing situation for almost a year now, it’s still taking some getting used to.

For those of us with elderly relatives living alone, it’s especially hard on us because of the restrictions that prohibit us from visiting them. The stress that comes with worrying about whether or not they’re ok and being well cared for is almost too much to bear.

The following tips will help to ease your worries and help you connect with your elderly relatives during this pandemic in a way that will give you peace of mind:

1. Get help from a senior home care service

Senior home care services provide non-medical care services such as meal preparation, companionship and transportation, and housekeeping to seniors living alone.

Enlisting these services to take care of your elderly relatives will help you to know who they’re having contact with and will help put your mind at ease knowing that someone is keeping an eye on them.

2. Monitor their care virtually

Technology has advanced to a point where some senior home care services offer to let you keep track of your relatives’ care via the internet — a welcome initiative during this pandemic!

You can monitor the care your relatives receive live from any device that has an internet connection. Additionally, you can let the caregivers know about important events such as birthdays or anniversaries, make payments to your home care service provider, and keep track of when you can visit your relative through a secure portal.

3. Keep track of their medications

If your relative needs to receive medication, you should know what those medications are, and keep yourself informed of when they would need their prescriptions refilled. You should also make sure that their caregiver knows about their medication and monitor when the caregiver lets your relative take it.

Photo by Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition on Unsplash

In a city like New York, making sure that your elderly relative receives the best home care possible should be a top priority for you. You can never be too cautious when it comes to those you love.

When all is said and done, it comes back to my opening question: how much do you value family?

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Audrey Barton