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Retirement is a special moment in most people’s lives.
It’s a time of celebration. You’ve officially made it to the end of your career. Now, you get to focus on what’s truly important in your life. Your family and friends. Your favorite fishing spots. All of the destinations that you’ve had on your bucket list.
It’s an exciting time, but it’s also a time filled with new challenges. You’re most likely in your 60s now and are starting to feel your age. And with that age comes new responsibilities like figuring out where you’re going to live as you age and how you’re going to get the care you need when it starts getting difficult to care for yourselves.
Most retirees would like to stay in their home. It makes sense. You’ve worked your whole life to own that home of yours, and you sure don’t want to leave it, but aging in place can take a lot of work.
Some retirees decided to sell their home after a few years and move into an elderly community that has cooks, maids, and medical staff to take care of their needs. On the surface it makes sense. You get a wonderful community to live in and your needs are taken care of. But, at the end of the day, it’s still expensive and comes with a drawback of losing some personal freedom and privacy.
But what if there was another way? What if you could stay inside the home, you worked so hard to create? What if you could get the care and companionship you need to age gracefully inside of your own living room?
That kind of at home care is what Noel Morris, the franchise owner of Home Instead in Mountain Home, set out to provide for the elderly in Mountain Home when he left his career in finance in 2014.
“The franchise actually started in Mountain Home in 2007,” Morris said. “Clay Talley, he was a friend of mine at the time. I had been in banking, and I was actually the CEO of the Twin Lakes Community Bank at the time and didn’t think I would change. Clay kind of dropped it in my life and I always wanted to do some that had a real deep purpose. This was it.”
Founded in 1994 by Paul and Lori Hogan to provide care to Paul’s 90-year-old grandmother, Home Instead focuses on providing seniors with the care they need to be able to age in place at their own homes.
The business flourished after its founding, quickly expanding into a worldwide organization. Today, it is now one of the largest senior care organizations in the world.
And that success can also be found here in the Ozarks. While Home Instead was established as a franchise in 2007, it has expanded to cover Marion and Boone County through the franchise’s Harrison office underneath Morris’s leadership.
Morris, who is a graduate of University of Arkansas, is married to his wife Elaine Morris, who co-owns the franchise with him. Together they have four children and will be celebrating 25 years of marriage together this year.
“It was a leap of faith,” Morris said. “Because of that, I didn’t over analyze it. I just jumped in, and I don’t remember feeling any great anxiety with it. We made up our mind. We wanted to do it, and within a few weeks, we were running it. We loved it.”
So, what does Home Instead do to help seniors age in their homes?
The first step in the process is training. Each Home Instead caregiver is trained in how to provide each of the services provided by the company. And it’s not just a single day of training.
The training takes several weeks, with trainees working in house to learn how to provide care, before being sent out on training visits to seniors in the area. While learning, each trainee is paid and works underneath the supervision of an experienced caregiver.
Each caregiver and the company as a whole, is bonded and insured, unlike many independent caregivers or contractors. Registered nurses are kept on staff for those in need of medical assistance.
“We hire them, we bring them in, we pay them to train,” Morris said. “Personal care is a huge thing. That’s the stuff we don’t like to talk about. The whole bathing, toileting kind of stuff. We go through all of that training and then, as a part of the training program, before they get out, we do shadowships.”
Services provided by Home Instead include personal services such as bathing and dressing, meal prep and housekeeping, transportation to activities, shopping and appointments and hospice support. The company also provides services for those dealing with chronic conditions like diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, and dementia.
Finally, Morris said that his staff also focus on one of the most important parts of aging in place – companionship.
Companionship, Morris said, is one of the core ingredients to keeping the elderly sound of body and mind. Companionship has been found to help with health conditions and the emotional needs of those needing care.
“We tend to overlook companionship,” Morris said. “There’s always a lot of tasks to be done when you go into a home. But I’ve seen the value in companionship. It’s really invaluable because loneliness and isolation is such a huge issue with elderly people, and that companionship is oftentimes a spark they need. That social spark to reenergize them and give them purpose.”
Aging in place provides a bevy of benefits to the elderly. To start, aging in place is often more affordable than moving into a care home which can cost thousands of dollars a month. It’s also more comfortable, with seniors having access to their favorite household items and things.
Aging in place has also been found to slow advancement of memory loss. One study found that seniors with “frequent” social activity contact saw a 70 percent reduction in cognitive decline when compared with more isolated individuals. There is also benefit to the familiarity of your surroundings helping to trigger memory. Smell is one of the most powerful memory facilitators for example, and studies have shown that in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, smells increase memory recall.
There’s also the benefit of staying in your own local community and neighborhood. Most communities have active senior centers and volunteer opportunities that can keep seniors active as they continue to age.
Lastly, there’s a sense of self determination. Aging in place has been found to bring a sense of independence to seniors, allowing them to stay in charge of their own schedule and activities. Aging in place allows you to maintain control over your environment as well. Remodeling, repainting, rearranging furniture, redecorating, or even controlling the thermostat are things that might not be possible in other living situations.
If you are interested in aging in place, or are interested in signing up for at home assistance, please contact Home Instead at (870) 425-0700.
