Memory care services, more commonly known as Alzheimer’s and dementia care, provides 24-hour care and safe and secure housing for older adults who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia or long term degenerative memory conditions.
Facilities specializing in memory care provide a protected, individually designed, comfortable environment for their residents with an ethos centered around ensuring the quality of life is categorically paramount.
What exactly is memory care?
Memory care facilities and communities are basically residential spaces that cater to the individual’s highly specific needs,
The main services that set memory care facilities aside from regular assisted living facilities include a more secure environment (thus ensuring residents cannot wander during memory loss away at night into possible danger), highly trained and specialized staff, memory-enhancing therapies, and 24-hour on-site care. Such care facilities also offer help with personal care, toileting and incontinence assistance, housekeeping, and medication management. Memory care facilities also offer complimentary transportation to both off-site medical appointments and social excursions and outings.
The Benefits of Memory Care
Seniors with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia-related illnesses should be provided with specific and unique care, medical treatments, and therapies that memory care facilities are proficient in providing.
This unique and quite innovative approach to dementia care enables residents the chance to maintain their skills as long as humanly possible, as well as opportunities to interact with other residents as and when they desire. Additionally, memory care facilities provide residents with enriching and engaging activities that are designed to stimulate cognition and improve their general quality of day-to-day life.
How does memory care assist with memory loss?
Tragically, all dementia-related illnesses and specifically Alzheimer’s disease, are usually progressive, and with that, the dementia sufferer’s memory loss will worsen over time.
Ultimately, dementia strips individuals of all abilities to live and function independently and look after themselves and their home, which inevitably places a great deal of worry, stress, and sadness onto their friends, families, and loved ones. In an individual suffering from progressive memory loss, they will almost certainly be rendered unable to carry out their personal ablutions and will tragically require around-the-clock supervised care in a safe and secure environment.
Memory care facilities are so designed to reduce the possibility that a resident may wander as much as is feasibly possible. The physical layouts are purposefully designed to reduce confusion and disorientation. Personalized apartments installed with bright and clear lighting throughout, reduced and in some cases almost non-existent background noise, and enclosed gardens and outside areas that allow residents to spend time safely outdoors surrounded by nature. In most cases, memory care facilities are part of a larger community of senior residents, often part of an assisted living complex.
The safety, wellbeing, mental health, security, and quality of life are all of paramount importance in the thoughtfully designed and organized memory care facilities, and if your loved one is suffering from a memory-related illness, memory care is certainly the best option moving forward.
