How does it feel to go in a nursing home? The question is highly difficult to answer. For family members, the process of choosing a nursing home is probably the most difficult decisions in their life.

It can be a lot of pressure to vehicle the right words and maintain a realistic dialogue with the aging family member(s). Sometime the person will feel abandoned and rejected from the core family and such frustrating feeling may result to a big lost of confidence. If you’re in the situation to find a facility in a rush, things might become even more complicated. And it could be worst if the person is suffering from medical crisis. It’s a difficult matter, including lots of factors. Once the aged person moving to the care home, everyone in the family want the best for her and that involves a smooth transition from home to nursing home. Everybody wants over all happiness for our loved one.

The main risk when accepted in a care home center is the lost of interest for every little things in the life. It may be because the person is getting bored or simply has a very bad transition from home. This is to take very seriously as it can leads to one of our major problem in nursing homes today, which is the elderly depression. In the first signs of the depression, the person can start by having regularly a lack of smiles, losing appetite, changing mood. Then, with nurses calling more often at the start of treatment, the lost of marks and habits, the person can easily and quickly get a depressive behavior, visible by those around. Depression extremely diminishes a person’s quality of life.

Whose care homes designed for and what are the advantages?
Such facilities are designed for elderly persons who are too sick to care for themselves or recovering from a medical intervention and express need of receiving qualified and professional’s services. The benefits for aged persons are multiple since they can take full advantage of equipment for disabled ones, better rehabilitation services, highly skilled nurses for daily treatments, and to keep the mood up, they get daily social nurses to converse with.

What shall I consider when choosing a care home?
The very first thing to check out during your selection process is certainly the location. The more the nursing home is close to your ‘home sweet home’ door, the better it is. That is true when you live in a country offering a large choice of facilities for aging people. Living not far from the nursing home your family member is makes the things easier. It allows indeed more often visits uplifting resident’s mood, and on top of that, it is good to monitor the resident’s condition.

Care Homes or Care Homes with Nursing?
In the 2002 nursing homes became known as care homes with nursing and residential homes became known as care homes. Check with the GP or the hospital if necessary whether your family member has some special medical needs, which implies special cares, or special nursing treatments. In our ageing society, special care becomes very common these days and is well supported by most of care homes groups. This may includes extra supervision, extra assistance for persons suffering of any mental diseases, or/and more equipments like computer-assisted chairs for disabled ones.

Participation
Another thing to check out during your selection process is the participation of the nursing home to the government programs and benefits. This can be done easily through your first approach on the phone while requesting a brochure of the facility. By the way, a large majority of nursing homes should be able to provide you with an electronic brochure in PDF format. It saves time and money for everyone.

Visiting
Then, it is good practice to go straight to the facilities. By visiting the care center you take advantage of many other assets that indeed can affect your judgment. After all, they are running just like other businesses and are often asked to make customer visits. As visiting rarely happen during rush hours (lunch times), it is often difficult to estimate the quality and quantity of care. You can always check at first glance the nursing staff density taking a picture ‘in your brain’. And estimate at three times the density of staff you saw during your visit. You will get a rough estimation of the care provided per person during a rush hour.

That is why it is important to make another visit, but this time without appointment. Why? Just because you check deeper the basics: Talk with residents, and ask them on a scale of 0 to 10 how happy they feel here.

Smelling the odors while you walk near the rooms is a good indicator of the quality of care. If you smell urine or feces means nursing staff do not clean up elders on a demand basis.

Still and very important questions to ask when looking for healthy nursing homes remains:

• What is the drug use level in the facility? Some drugs overused in some nursing homes resulted to be devastating.
• What kind of exercise is available? Do they organize some outdoor visits and activities? Exercise is very important to prevent Alzheimer’s diseases; it keeps residents mentally and physically stimulated.
• Last but not least question to not forget is wether it is possible to check out the last inspection survey. You may find some irregularities in there. And it allows you to compare different residential homes on other and various criteria’s.

Who can help me to pay?
Care homes in the UK nowadays can be financed in several ways. First, it is important to note that moving to these facilities does not affect the State Pension, and Disabilities allowances (like Incapacity Benefit, Severe Disablement Allowance, Bereavement Allowance, etc.) Although it will not affect it, the State Pension will be counted as income when your contribution to your nursing home fees is assessed. Then, your local council can help you with your nursing home fees. This is the authority that you’ll need to contact to move your loved one to a nursing home. You need an assessment of needs from them and present them the financial conditions. Your local council will expect you to claim any income support or Pension Credit that you are entitled to and will help you apply.

Allowance

Nevertheless, you may be eligible for Disability Living Allowance (DLA) or Attendance Allowance (AA). These two money supports are quite common for many elderly in the UK. Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is a tax-free benefit for children and adults who need extra help and are physically or mentally disabled. It may last 4 weeks when you incorporate a nursing home in the UK. Attendance Allowance (AA) is a tax-free benefit that can be cumulated with DLA designed for disabled people and people aged 65+. Keep in mind that Attendance Allowance and the care component of Disability Living Allowance are benefits paid to people who need certain supervision or temporal help and care regardless of the financial situation. More information can be grabed on the site Directgov – Care Homes and Benefits.

Other sources of income
If you have pension credit it will generally stay the same in case of short-term stay, whereas you should contact them in order to work out your Pension Credit and pay it at the correct rate if you want to stay in the nursing home for a long-term stay. If you want to claim housing benefit or council tax benefit it is possible. Although the rules are set by the UK Parliament (not applicable for Northern Ireland), and for people over 60, better contact your local authorities as this is considered as relative income and savings.