The FAMCare Blog

Today's blog is written by guest blogger, Beverly Nelson, from Stand Up for Caregivers! We truly appreciate her for sharing these helpful insights.

We all have rough periods in life. For seniors, however, slumps can be significantly harder to get out of, especially if they don’t have family around to offer support. Fortunately, friends, neighbors, and other community members have the power to make a difference for a senior feeling down.

Our Aging Population

The number of Americans ages 65 and older will more than double over the next 40 years, reaching 80 million in 2040. The number of adults ages 85 and older, the group most often needing help with basic personal care, will nearly quadruple between 2000 and 2040 due to improvements in life expectancy that have propelled the increase in the older population. Between 1900 and 1960, life expectancy at birth increased from 51 years to 74 years for men and from 58 years to 80 years for women. Life expectancy's future course is uncertain but could grow dramatically. Some experts claim that half of girls born today will live until age 100.

Somewhere along the line America's pop culture began to malign millennials. They became known as the narcissistic generation that would rather play video games than outdoor sports; craved YouTube fame; wanted only to be tech entrepreneurs; decorated with laptops and futons; were summed up as lazy and self-centered.

The COVID-19 pandemic swept the nation, killing more than 184,000 residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. The post pandemic response to this massacre has been confusion, doubt, and indecision on the part of the elderly and their caregivers about the use of long-term care facilities.

It is undeniable that most of us prefer not to look too closely at what goes on in nursing homes across the country. In fact, unless we have a need of nursing home services for ourselves or for our elderly loved ones, we hardly notice them at all. This, of course, is a natural aversion to sickness, aging, and death. However, after COVID-19 ravaged the elderly population in nursing homes, infecting 654,000 residents and killing 132,000 elderly Americans, social workers began to take a closer look at how nursing homes are run and how we can improve the service they seek to provide.

We were surprised by the results of our recent mini-poll, when we asked six case workers serving our elder population what they considered the most pressing current problem elders are facing. 3 out of 6 (50%) said, "internet scams". Internet scams?! What’s going on now? What kind of scoundrel would cheat the elderly out of the last of their nest egg?

Case workers tell us that the shameful practice of scamming seniors is on the rise. With the elderly population growing, seniors racked up more than $3 billion in losses this past year. Case workers say that the heart-breaking irony of elder fraud is that seniors are targeted because they tend to be trusting and polite.

Everyone knows how the pandemic walloped the elderly in 2020. Nursing homes became the epicenter of COVID-19 deaths. No, Mr. Sinatra, it was not “a very good year” for the elderly.

Our senior population continues to grow, with the aging of the baby boomers. And with the glut of older citizens comes a glut of issues that elder care workers must deal with. There are health issues – both physical and mental. Muscles and bones get weaker, senses start to fail – hearing, eyesight, even touch, taste and smell, in some cases. And then there’s the loss of mental facilities. About 10% of people over 65 suffer from some form of dementia and it goes up to 32% for those over 85.

Our friend, Kent Elliot has submitted a great guide to our blog that I wanted to share with you today.  Read on to learn about fall prevention best practices that can help seniors age in place safely. In the article he covers a variety of topics, including which home modifications help prevent falls, tips on lifestyle changes that aid in fall prevention, and more.  

Throughout life, we may find ourselves having difficult conversations with our loved ones. There is never an easy way to approach these, and some can be upsetting to even think of. Discussing end-of-life arrangements is perhaps one of the hardest to reconcile, yet it can be one of the most important conversations we can have.