After the age of 85, the likelihood of needing assistance with one or more activities of daily living from a facility offering assisted living for seniors or a caregiver, increases dramatically. 16% of people aged between ages of eighty-five and ninety-three need some form of help with these activities — with that percentage rising to over half for people in their nineties!
Adult children typically help elderly parents negotiate housing, social-service and health care options. Without such a fallback, elder orphans can reduce their risks by building their own support structures or joining existing groups. Because these mechanisms exist outside of family norms and are tied to other vulnerable elders such as unmarried elderly people living alone (and thus being at high risk for abuse); academics contend that they have a critical role in reducing elder abuse risk and promoting health independently from families.
People who are aging alone with no kids or spouse need to make plans when they are independent and functional. This timeline should help you to organize your home, your finances and even your relationships with others in preparation for the future and all the care that you are going to need when you are no longer able to care for yourself and live independently in your own home, you will most likely need to hire caregivers aides and medical attendants or be part of a senior living in California. But for those who can still live independently, they can look for a facility that offer independent living for seniors.
Without children, you will want to identify the people in your life that can assume healthcare and financial authority when you aren’t able to. Hire a trust services expert to create a plan that will allow these individuals to step in and take over for you in a timely fashion if you aren’t able to make those decisions yourself – you don’t want a loved one stressing out trying to wade through piles of documents at the worst possible time. Communicate your wishes for end of life care so that others can help ensure that the process is carried out in the way you hoped it would should the need arise not longer in the future than today!
