What Does it Mean to Be a Long-Distance Caregiver?
Learning to accept responsibility as a long-distance caregiver can be complicated, especially if you’re not sure what you can really do from where you live. Here are some of the things you may be facing.
You Can’t Be There as Often as You Want to Be.
As it is, you probably wish that you could spend more time with your aging adult, but poor health or other issues facing your senior can sharpen that ache. If you have other family members who do live closer to your senior, they may be able to check in periodically. In addition, you might want to consider hiring home care providers who can be there in person for your aging adult.
You’re Coordinating Services and Support.
From afar, you can manage and coordinate the support teams and services that help your senior in person every day. This can take being extremely organized on your part and getting in touch with agencies that help the elderly which are local to your senior. The local agencies handle the in-person tasks, while you’re able to let your elderly family member know who to expect and when.
You Might Be Handling Research and Paperwork.
Caregivers handle quite a bit of paperwork and research, which you might think that you won’t be able to deal with because you’re far away. With so many technological tools available, however, you may be able to handle far more of your senior’s paperwork than you thought that you could. You may also be doing research on health conditions and solutions for your aging adult.
You May Need to Do Some Long-range Planning.
Ultimately, no matter how well you’re able to manage the situation for your elderly family member as a long-distance caregiver, you may still need to have an emergency plan. Should your elderly family member’s health deteriorate quickly or if there’s some other emergency, you need to know how you’ll handle that. Hopefully you’ll never need the plan, but it’s still vital to have it.
Being a caregiver, whether you’re right there or far away, is different for every caregiver. But when you know that you might be facing, you can plan much more effectively.