What is the hardest part about caring for your aging parents?

Caring from a distance.

As the holidays have ended, I can guess there are many people who have discovered something has changed about their  parents.  A visit home during Christmas is usually when such shocking discoveries are made.  Your mother has a growth on her face and refuses to go to a dermatologist.  Your father trembles more and is unsteady on his feet.  Or worse, the car has lots of scratches and scrapes, dings and dents indicating  your aging parents have serious vision problems.

Estimates are 7 million family members across America  are traveling one hour of more on a regular basis to assist with the eldercare of relatives.  My sister-in-law is one of them and she has already worn out a BMW doing it.

However, a new service is emerging and it is providing a local care coordinator for such situations. 

 Project managing for the elderly

This approach to solving problems for the elderly and their caregivers is still relatively new, but it's what families and churches have been doing since the beginning of time.   The difference now is more children live too far away to help their parents and the aging population is growing so fast, there aren't enough geriatric care workers to go around.  So extra help is needed, but it has to be on a better more organized level than simply finding a good doctor and someone who will stay with the elderly person. 

A care managers' job is to coordinate nurses, social workers and councilors.  It could possibly  be a godsend for many stressed out caregivers. 

 Check out  a new website that explains the issues and answers many questions about long distance  caregiving.  http://www.cfad.org. 

Also, here's an excellent article by Jonathan Peterson of the Los Angeles  Times with new facts  about caregiving from a distance.

Read Caring for Aging Parents from a Distance:A Growing Problem 

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