Mom fell. Those are two words we never want to hear, but if you have an aging parent, there is a good chance you will. What do you do? Falls are the leading cause of injury and death among older adults in the US. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that in 2014, older adults fell 29 million times, resulting [...]
When we think about family caregivers, we usually picture spouses or 50-something adult children. But, it turns out, about one-third of Americans have helped care for an older loved one by age 40. In some respects, those millennials resemble older caregivers: They are as likely to underestimate the need for long-term supports and services in old age and they misunderstand [...]
It is hard to be an adult child caring for an aging parent. But it is also hard to be an aging parent being cared for by an adult child. One solution: Think of this relationship as a partnership, not as one family member providing a service to another. Indeed, the phrase “care partners” is catching on in some corners [...]
Isolation and loneliness are serious problems for older adults. They become less mobile, their friends and relatives die, hearing loss and other physical limitations make it harder to communicate with others, and seniors are often reluctant to even try to make new friends. Young people, they say, are not interested, and, as for other older people, why bother, they will [...]
The Trump Administration announced last week that it will allow states to require Medicaid recipients to work, take job training, or do community service to stay eligible for the program, which provides both medical and long-term care services for people with low incomes. Ten states have asked to make this change, and the administration has given the greenlight to the [...]
Socially-isolated older adults are likely to be sicker and die sooner, and have higher health care expenses, than seniors who retain their social connections. A new study by researchers from the AARP Public Policy Institute, Stanford University, and Harvard finds that Medicare spends an estimated $6.7 billion more each year on seniors who have little social contact with others. About [...]
If you or a loved one needs long-term care, where you live matters…a lot. A new report by AARP shows wide variation in the quality of supports and services among states—whether delivered at home or in a nursing facility. While it found important improvements across states, it also identified significant shortcomings, even in the highest-rated states. The best states to [...]
The Trump Administration believes that caring for babies is so important that employers should give their parents up to six weeks of paid leave. It apparently doesn’t believe it is as important, or as disruptive to work life, to care for aging parents or other relatives in need of personal assistance. That, at least, is the message it is sending [...]
About four in 10 family caregivers are men—sons, husbands, brothers, sons-in-law, or neighbors. We are nearly always ignored in discussions about caregiving, lost in the stereotype of the family caregiver as a 40-something daughter. Finally, AARP is shining a much-needed spotlight on these men. A new study by Jean Accius at AARP’s Public Policy Institute paints a valuable, and rare, [...]
It costs families more to care for a frail older adult than to raise a child for the first 17 years of her life. Yet, while the government routinely provides a broad range of assistance and free services for children, it offers only limited benefits for those needing long-term supports and services—and mostly only for those who are impoverished and [...]