For a spouse caregiver in Sandy Springs, regular respite care provides a dependent block of time each week while a Care Pro supports your spouse at home. The goal is not to wait until you are exhausted. It is to create a routine your spouse understands and which you can utilize to plan around.
If you need to schedule appointments, errands, exercise, lunch with a friend, or just some uninterrupted time, then I would suggest starting with Wednesday afternoons.
You don’t need to take a vacation to deserve respite care. A few hours that are predictable and routine are really useful.
How to Choose a Repeatable Block of Time Instead of Waiting for a Crisis
I would simply ask, what time of the week would having another supportive person in the home bring about the greatest impact?
For one spouse caregiver it may be Wednesday afternoon through evening preparation, and for another caregiver, it may be the same day each week in the morning to allow for errands and meetings.
The important factor is consistency.
A routine creates a known pattern for your spouse and a known pattern for you around which you can schedule the expectations of care.
When looking into respite care in Sandy Springs, think about the intended aims of the time away you want to take. Answering the following questions will help.
What do I never seem to get around to doing because I can’t make myself leave to do it?
What day of the week do I struggle to manage the most?
What schedules do I want to honor and respect?
What would make a routine that works for both of us most easiest to establish?
Building a routine care schedule is most important so that you can keep it. There are no tallies to see who has visited the most. There is no great number of hours every spouse caregiver should aim to book. What matters is your spouse’s routines and your own and how much and what kind of support you are needing depending on local Care Pro availability. There is no such thing as too big, best is always building a useful enough care schedule.
Which care provider routines do you want to establish first?
A good respite visit is one that fits around the care recipient’s day as much as possible.
I wouldn’t start respite care with a long list of tasks, I would start with making it a routine for your home so that the care recipient feels comfortable.
This would include what time your spouse usually eats lunch, where they like to sit while watching television and what they like to watch, how help should be offered and whether assistance should be offered conversationally or if they like their afternoons to be quiet.
Personal care is also part of the Care Plan, so the care provider needs to be made aware of the spouse’s personal care routine and how your spouse prefers to receive support and how much privacy and choice should be offered.
A first set of information can include:
Meals and Drinks - usual times, preferences, and your spouse’s preferred eating places.
Movement Around the Home – location of used/most frequented items, and your spouse’s routines.
Personal Routines – non-medical tasks included in the Care Plan, agreed upon by you and your spouse.
Preferred Activities – (Quiet) time and their preferred activities.
Household Routine – daily activities that occur in the Care Plan.
This information is not meant to transform your marriage into a manual.
However, this Care Plan provides the Home Instead Caregiver enough detail to provide support to your spouse. This detail is meant to reduce your need to manage your spouse’s daily schedule from a distance.
You can also review Home Instead’s broader home care services to better understand the types of support that may be included in a Care Plan.
How to Avoid Being the Only One Who Knows Everything About Maintaing the Spouse Caregiver
The biggest challenge of being the primary spouse caregiver is becoming the detail person.
You probably know the cup, the first lunch preparation preference, the nap routine, and the activities they like. If you know where the smooth part of their afternoon is, you’re pretty much an encyclopedia.
That’s a good thing. Repeat after me: you do not need to be the person everyone asks.
I suggest you put some of this detail into three different categories.
The first of these categories is “Essential Routines”. This contains the order of the care visit, important preferences, and instructions for household tasks.
The second is preference. The specific details that your spouse prefers: coffee served in their mug, the TV off during meals, or in which room, can help convey care as personal rather than process-driven.
The third is information that needs a collective family response. These types of questions can remain with you or another agreed-upon family contact, avoiding the informal ‘taking care’ approach during visits.
A Care Plan is a good way to organize these types of preferences, info, and family decisions. It is also helpful to provide a common point of reference when Care routine changes occur.
Families considering the wider spectrum of Elder Care in Sandy Springs often find that this approach is very helpful when many involved family members offer their support to one individual.
They should be incorporated in this process as much as possible. Respite care is most successful for the care recipient when they understand the plan, have been involved in the process, and know that the plan does not disrupt normal household activities.
When Respite Care becomes a Larger Supported Care Schedule
It is possible that the support that was originally planned as one afternoon respite is not enough.
The focus should be on the whole schedule rather than just a challenging day.
For instance, you may find that the Wednesday respite care is helpful, but you struggle to leave to do other things that are equally important during the rest of the week. Routines of the household and personal care may also become more challenging to manage and time consuming.
Not all changes mean your spouse needs full time care. More changes likely mean changes in the Care Plan are necessary. Services like respite care become needed on a more regular basis. Perhaps you have exceeded the use of one weekly respite care visit. Perhaps you have begun to cancel your own appointments because you are unable to leave. If daily routines begin to become difficult to manage, then more respite care should be scheduled. Your spouse's care needs are also changing. Perhaps the time that was reserved for respite care is no longer meeting your needs. Perhaps you are no longer able to utilize the spare time to relax. These changes warrant a more gradual respite care scheduling system. You may choose to add an additional respite care visit, change the time of your existing respite care visit, or possibly better adapt to the home care systems that are currently available to you. It is not necessary to jump from one respite care visit to a full time care schedule just because things have changed. You must first identify the recurring gap and then decide how much support is appropriate and necessary.
How many hours of respite care are needed?
There is no correct answer that applies to everyone. You ought to request a visit that is long enough for you to complete something important and not return to an unfinished task. You should contact your local office to learn about the available options and requirements for scheduling before constructing your weekly respite visit schedule.
Does respite care have to happen on the same day every week?
No, but it can help to have a regular day or time if you can. Having a repeated day or time for that same purpose helps familiarize your spouse with the routine of the visit. If your schedule changes a lot during the week, make sure you inform us so we can address this when we create the Care Plan.
What is your spouse allowed to do while I am out of the home?
This depends on the Care Plan and the services booked. Non-medical home care can consist of companionship and assistance with some routine tasks, preparing meals, some housework, or simple personal hygiene tasks. The expectations should be clear before the visits begin so you and your spouse know what will happen during the visits.
What do you mean by the limits of non-medical respite care?
Non-medical home care provides services that are complementary to skilled nursing care or other care services that require the involvement of a licensed health care practitioner. If your spouse requires any type of nursing care or medical care, in addition to non-medical home care, you may need to hire a physician, a nurse, home health care provider, or other clinical professionals.
What should I do if my spouse refuses respite care?
You can present care as a flexible option rather than something you have decided for your spouse. You can also explain how you have created a flexible routine for part of the day and will add the care on a routine basis later.
May I remain home during the first few respite visits?
We can discuss what works best for your household when the Care Plan is made. Some partners prefer that their spouse is present during the first few visits while others are comfortable using the first few visits to get away and establish a routine.
How do hotspots determine when respite care isn’t sufficient?
Look for trends, not just bad days. If you find that you need reliable support multiple times a week, at various hours or with additional unconstrained personal support, don’t hesitate to ask for a new Care Plan with a broader home care schedule.
A break should be predictable and something you deserve, not something that you arrange after the week has become unbearable.
If Wednesday afternoons work best for your household, talk about what goes on during that time, what your spouse would like to keep doing, and where a Care Pro could come in.
Our Atlanta Home Instead team offers home care services in Atlanta for families residing in the Sandy Springs area. Call our team to discuss home care and the support we offer to your family.
About the Author
Matt Cohn has more than 25 years of experience working in elderly care and home care with a special focus on assisting older adults to live independently. He enjoys working with families and caregivers so that he may offer his professional advice pertaining to senior care and support for caregiving relationships.
