If you take care of your parent with dementia and they are getting much worse this can be difficult for anyone to handle. Fortunately, you can get the help you need by choosing either home health care or by placing your parent in a nursing home. Below is information about each of these things so you can decide what would be best for your parent.

Home Health Care

Home health care includes things like physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy. A skilled nurse will come to your home to provide your parent with these services. 

In most cases this will involve helping your parent with eating, dressing, and bathing. This may also include help with cleaning the home, monitoring your parent's medication, and more. Exactly what services are provided will depend on the home health care agency that you choose. 

You do need to make sure you choose a home health care agency with a good reputation and rating. This is easy to do as you can ask friends in your area that have used this agency or do research on your own. There are also many questions you should ask, such as how long the agency has been in business and is the home health care agency as been approved by a Medicare provider. If required by your state, is the home health care service licensed. 

Nursing Home

If you choose a nursing home a nursing home with memory care would be best. This means the nursing home has skilled nurses and other employees that have been trained to work with people that have memory problems, such as Alzheimer's. 

Also, consider a private room or a shared room. A shared room will be much less expensive but consider how your parent will feel staying in a room with someone they don't know. Plus, because they have Alzheimer's, this may make things even more confusing for them.

The layout for the memory care part of the nursing home is generally much different. For example, the area will be designed to handle patients with memory. This is because people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia tend to wander at night. This will ensure your parent can wander without becoming injured. Memory care units often have daily activities that will work well for people that have Alzheimer's. The activities they will do will depend on what stage of Alzheimer's your parent is currently in.

Contact both home healthcare agencies and nursing homes with memory care units to help you plan.