Aging in Place Professional Services

Our unique approach in delivering our services include, building an active and loyal relationship with you, our clients, while carefully evaluating your individual needs. This relationship may then extend to caregivers, doctors, nurses, architects, builders and others whom they trust when making these life enhancements.

Personal Interview with Client:

This evaluation is comprehensive in structure and includes physical, sensory, functional and leisure, and cognitive components to determine needs for safety measures in the home. Objective measures in each of the following areas are taken.

• Physical components can include strength and range of motion assessments that go hand in hand with achieving accessibility goals. As clients age or become injured, this information is vital when determining cabinet heights in the kitchen or grab bar positions in the bathroom.
• Visual and hearing components are often overlooked in the aging population when it comes to addressing safety. Establishing what type of lighting may or not be sensitive to a patient with cataracts or glaucoma is essential for creating the functional and safe environment. Hard of hearing patients or those who experience ringing in the ears or vertigo, are subject to further assessment to ensure their safety.
• Activity analysis can help the therapist experience how the client "lives" in their environment. Functional areas such as taking a bath or gardening can be analyzed to determine possible safety hazards or suggest a teaching opportunity to promote energy conservation techniques.
• Cognitive measures are extremely important because this element cannot be separated from the physical body when performing the skills of living. A decline in this area is inevitable but when the level is determined, the environment can be adapted to the means necessary. For example, a person with dementia can often forget important environmental factors like where the drop off step to the living room is located. Therefore, the necessary suggestions for lighting or textured flooring prior to the step can provide reminding cues.
• This holistic approach of discovering the client can further involve the caregiver, life care planner or other medical advisors to determine additional needs.

Evaluation of Home:

• This unique evaluation will include a thorough look at the client's living environment, inside and outside the home. Often times this becomes necessary following a discharge from a hospital or rehab facility. Other times it can be planned early during home renovations or new construction plans to ensure that the home can be universally accessible for most life circumstances.
• Home modifications can be aesthetically pleasing to the eye, practically unnoticeable with the right designers. Since the home is privately owned, the design can be uniquely tailored to the client's lifestyle, encompassing the information obtained in the personal interview. The decline of physical abilities such as vision, cognition, strength, balance, etc. can pose great threat in a home environment that is not evaluated by an educated advisor. Therefore, in this process, hazards will be determined, enforcements will be made, and suggestions for modifications will be noted. Prioritization of these modifications will always be an option for the client and carried out at their own discretion.

The Home for Life Design: A Combination of Person and Home

• When the individual client and home findings are combined, the components help us to create a unique home design, centered around the priorities and safety needs of the client. This personalized assessment provided by the therapist, includes written structural and non-structural suggestions that enable the client to live safely within the home. Additional architectural advice can be provided as part of the Home for Life service to suggest ideal structural modifications.
• An occupational therapist (OT) upholds the professional standards to help clients achieve independence in all activities of living, ultimately including life in the home. Their input is essential and their client-centered vision allows for the highest quality of care and puts trust in delivering our service.
• This concept of creating barrier free and safe environments is not new, as advocates for such, we as therapists and designers, cannot find enough ways to make this possible for all. Many studies suggest quality of life in the home versus skilled nursing facilities. "Living in one's home or personal dwelling should provide the highest degree of personal autonomy and access to resources of all types. Research indicates that independent living promotes life satisfaction, health and self-esteem" (Crist, 1999).