Helping Your Elderly Parents Stay Independent In Their Home

My mum has reached that time of life where she definitely needs a lot more help in the home. This means it’s a fine balancing act that I have to perform that will help her, but also give her a feeling of independence living alone in her home. There are many practical things that you can do around the home that will enable elderly parents to live independently in their home to a grand old age.

My mum in particular is prone to having an occasional fall so it’s important that she can live independently on her own and that the house is safe for her to move around. This can be done very cheaply which is especially important if you are on a budget.

To make the home safe for somebody that is elderly or has a medical condition, but wishes to live independently is important. Agin care offer visual guides that are simple to follow and will enable your relatives or elderly parents, which is the case for myself, to live independently for as long as possible. You can check out their visual guides right here. As I have mentioned my mum is a little unsteady at times on her feet. This is my mum’s greatest fear. Falling and not being found for a few hours and it can without a doubt give her quite a bit of anxiety. So to ease her fears we have as a family installed a few measures in her home to make it safer. Here are a few things that we have done.

1. Handrails Handrails are really a very inexpensive improvement to make the home safer for my mum and they’re very simple to fit, even for a DIY novice. It’s important to place them at regular intervals in the home and especially where there is nothing else to grab should your elderly parent become unsteady on their feet. For example my mum lives in a bungalow and it has a very long hallway so I fitted handrails to both sides of the hallway for the entire length of the hallway. This gives her the security that should she become unsteady she has something to grab to stop her falling.

2. Floors

Floors in the kitchen and bathroom can become slippery. To make sure that she doesn’t fall in either area we have had a non-slip floor fitted to the bathroom so even if it gets wet there is little chance of my mum slipping and consequently falling.

In the kitchen, which has a laminate floor, we have installed anti-slip mats which makes walking around the kitchen safer for her.

3. Showering.

We converted the bathroom to a walk-in shower for my mum which undoubtedly has made it easier to live her life independently. When we had this done we also had a chair fitted because standing in the shower can be quite a strain on elderly person. This will help to reduce the chance of falling whilst having a shower.

These were just a few of things that we have done to help my mum live independently in her own home. So whether it’s just age or a medical condition, it’s easy to adapt a home for somebody to live independently.

Jane Byrne, project manager at a Dublin nursing home, notes that, “As people age, things can get mixed up, forgotten or misplaced due to poor memory, worsening eyesight or distraction. Living with an elderly family member can bring up tensions you didn’t realise were lurking when you lived apart.

Do you have an elderly relative or a relative with a medical where you have adapted their home so they can live independently? I would love to hear in the comments below.