Find The Right Ccrc For Yourself Or A Loved One

A no-nonsense guide from a retired real estate agent on what you need to know about continuing care retirement communities.

From Amazon review: I read this book last May when I was thinking about moving to a CCRC. The information was invaluable and I will be moving to a CCRC this month. Retired real estate agent, Ruth Alvarez explains everything you need to know about choosing a Continuing Care Retirement Community. This is the large print second edition.

Don't waste your retirement savings on the wrong CCRC. One study revealed that 60% of new residents made their decision based on the Continuing Care Retirement Community's (CCRC) own marketing materials. Get some no-nonsense advice from someone who's actually made the move and understands what to look for and what not to believe. This book explains Types of housing and contracts, Entrance and monthly fees, Essential things every CCRC should have, What guarantees you'll get, and What to do if things don't work out the way you hoped. There's also a chapter to help you convince someone it's time to move and make the move as painless and efficient as possible. This third edition addresses changes in regulations and laws and responds to reader suggestions. Chapters were added on bankruptcy, tax laws, resident rights, and why CCRCs still are a good solution for seniors. Retired real estate agent Ruth Alvarez drew from her own experience as a CCRC resident and her successful efforts to move her parents and other elderly relatives into CCRCs.

This book tells you a great deal about how to evaluate and select housing accommodations for the aging seniors in your life or loved ones in deteriorating health and reveals information that administrators at assisted living facilities, home health agencies and CCRC's, for example, may not tell you unless you ask. It explores many housing options that boomers and seniors need to consider when making housing decisions at a critical time in their lives.

When a loved one with mental illness comes into contact with the law, trying to advocate for them can be an overwhelming and frustrating endeavor. Mental illness adds a layer of complexity to legal processes, and the justice system can be downright bewildering, even for the most well-intentioned. How can families find out if their loved one is being mistreated or ignored, and how can they make sense of their rights under various laws and regulations? Family Guide to Mental Illness and the Law offers the nuts-and-bolts legal information and problem-solving steps families need. This accessible resource explains how common legal issues uniquely impact people with various forms of mental illness and what family members can do to help. Readers will learn how to - help protect a loved one's job, housing, or medical care - participate in hearings about guardianship, involuntary commitment, bankruptcy, and more - assist in making financial arrangements - navigate federal laws surrounding the Family and Medical Leave Act, HIPAA, disability claims, and workers' compensation - steer criminal proceedings away from jail and toward treatment Beyond the legal system, this book also guides readers in interacting with officials and authorities, lobbying for better laws, and working with local governments towards improving policies that affect those with mental illness. Complete with real-world examples, Family Guide to Mental Illness and the Law provides practical advice and eases the feelings of isolation that often accompany loving someone with mental illness.

A hopeful and practical guide to taming the challenges of dementia with creative interventions inspired by real stories of sufferers and caregivers alike. If you've ever cared for someone with dementia, you might empathize with Alice, who tumbled down a rabbit hole and discovered herself in an unhappy world where time moved oddly, animals and plants spoke, but mostly to berate you. Familiar objects became terribly out of scale. If you're caring for someone with dementia now, you might feel like someone changed the rules of reality and that you need a guide, preferably someone kinder than the perennially late rabbit. This book supports the journey—taken by both the caregiver and the person with dementia—providing loved ones with practical recommendations and enriched with human empathy. This book helps ease the stress by offering interventions and non-pharmaceutical therapeutic suggestions. It helps decode dementia's visceral world and supports non-cognitive human experiences. It shares stories of real people struggling to survive the challenges presented by dementia paired with practical examples of interventions that target the miseries of dementia behaviors, triggers, and causalities induced by them. The book provides options in the art of caregiving alongside the power of place, furnishings, light, color, technology, nature, and the senses. Barbara Huelat explores options in human engagement, the experience of destinations, positive distractions, familiar settings, furnishings, light, color, technology, nature, and the emotion of the senses. She offers design interventions that support the family caregivers in functional and emotional outcomes. No cure exists for dementia, but the tips, tools, strategies and suggestions include here provide tools for caregivers and those with dementia to make the experience more comfortable and calm.

In a powerful blending of memoir and practical strategies from a medical doctor’s perspective, The Gift of Caring: Saving Our Parents – and ourselves - from the Perils of Modern Healthcare reveals the hidden side of modern healthcare practices for aging Americans. This ground-breaking book, co-written by award-winning author Marcy Houle and nationally-recognized geriatrician and public health advocate, Elizabeth Eckstrom MD MPH, sheds new light on aging by showing it from twin perspectives: the story of a daughter desperately seeking help for the parents she loves, and a geriatrician who offers life-changing strategies that can protect our loved ones and ourselves. Today, for many older adults, the medical delivery system is confusing, fragmented, and ill-equipped to provide comprehensive, person-centered care. Under our current healthcare model, thousands of aging persons face unnecessary suffering, hospitalizations and nursing home stays, and even preventable death. Seniors and families often feel powerless as they travel this sad journey. Not having knowledge of aging’s changes, they resign themselves to believing there is nothing anyone can do to help, while some health care professionals simply write off symptoms seniors endure as “just old age.” But as Marcy Houle discovered in caring for her parents, many of the problems often are not “just old age.” Further, the real issue is not that the answers to ease suffering don’t exist. Rather, what we need to know is generally not available to the general public. Even more concerning, many health care professionals have had little or no training in the care of older adults. The Gift of Caring hopes to change that. It is written to give empowerment to all older adults, family members, and health care professionals, by sharing much needed knowledge and practical strategies. The Gift of Caring shows the best ways to advocate for our parent’s health care … and our own … by giving us the tools we need to insist upon the better way. Your parents and you deserve the best healthcare as you age- But there are so many reasons why that’s not happening.You can change that.

THIS IS THE NEWLY REVISED SECOND EDITION TO THE BEST SELLING BOOK ON RETIREMENT COMMUNITIES Are you or a loved on considering a retirement community, but are confused about the various alternatives? Perhaps you would prefer to age at home but question whether it is practical and feel that exploring all of your options is a sensible exercise. If so, then you have chosen the right place to start by picking up this book! Based specifically on popular questions that noted expert on retirement communities and Amazon best-selling author, Brad Breeding has received from older Americans and their adult children, this newly updated and enhanced edition of "What's the Deal with Retirement Communities?" is designed to be the first step in your research process - providing answers in a simple and concise fashion. In this book, you will learn what you need to know about the retirement living landscape including: - The importance of planning ahead for the later phases of retirement - What must you consider when deciding between at-home care and a community? - What defines a retirement community? - How to distinguish one type of retirement community from another - The relationship between retirement communities and long-term care services - What does long-term care cost? - Payment and contract structures for retirement communities