Home for a Lifetime

Physical changes happen. Whether it’s due to the natural aging process, a sudden need (an accident) or a progressive disease (like as Multiple Sclerosis), your home may no longer be up to the task. It’s time for a home assessment. This home assessment, performed by a qualified individual, will help to determine what improvements or modifications are needed to help you continue living in your home.

The NAHB and AARP teamed together to create a certification for such a qualified individual; the Certified Aging In Place Specialist (or CAPS). During the certification process, the individual undergoes specialized training and gains the necessary insight and skills to perform a home evaluation.

What types of things does a CAPS professional look for? They are going to look at many different aspects of daily living, such as physical ability and limitations, the layout of the home and what tools or assistive devices are being used or could be used in the future. For example, even though a person is using a mobility aid they want to be able to get around without help from another. So a CAPS certified individual may look at how that individual currently functions and what obstacles they face in their daily tasks and may suggest products such as ramps, lowered light switches, a walk in shower, and pull out shelving in the kitchen.

So how does a CAPS certified professional know what is appropriate for every single individual? To be honest- they won’t. That is why you need to make sure that whomever you choose for your evaluation understands their own strengths and weaknesses and knows when to seek out help from other professionals. If need be, a team of professionals from different disciplines can work together to complete an evaluation and determine the appropriate course of action.

Word of mouth is a great way to find such an individual but you can also contact your Better Business Bureau or local Area Agency on Aging for references. The NAHB and AARP websites are other helpful resources to get you pointed in the right direction.

Have you had a home evaluation? How was your experience? Would you recommend that individual or individuals again?

There are many indicators that define the need for a home assessment. Here are a few:

From the individual’s perspective:

• There is a crisis. An accident, surgery or disease has changed your physical or cognitive (mental) needs.
• Perhaps a mobility device has been prescribed, like a cane or walker which makes it more difficult to maneuver in the home.
• A person with special needs is moving in.
• It is time to update a kitchen or bathroom and you want to plan for the future. It is cheaper and easier to prepare for safe and supportive features ahead of time than to make changes at a time of crisis.

From the family’s or professional’s perspective:

• There has been a crisis, like a fall that required hospitalization, and the patient wishes to return home.
• There have been observations that one or more people in the household are struggling to perform daily tasks and the situation could be improved with home modifications.
• There have been observations of unsafe or unsanitary practices.
• A spouse is struggling with the physical demands of caring for their partner.

Home assessments can be done informally with the help of friends and family, noting needs and issues to be dealt with, or the assessment can be more formal, provided by one or more professionals. These professionals look at how a client performs a set of activities within the home, noting opportunities for changes to ease the task. These activities would include bathing, preparing food, getting dressed, grooming, and eating meals. The assessment is partly observation, partly detective work designed to uncover needs regarding health or safety that may otherwise be overlooked. Some people may not mention a need because they take the difficulty for granted, for fear of losing their dignity or for fear of losing their independence or their home.

Depending on the nature of a home assessment and who performs it, results can vary greatly; from the recommendation of techniques and tools like daily living aids to help remember medications to the recommendation of a completely remodeled first floor to allow the resident to eliminate stairs. The most important criteria for everyone involved is to keep an open mind. Every assessment is unique because every person is unique. Although there are overall guiding principles for accessibility, there is no cookie cutter solution. Don’t begin your project without an objective home assessment!

When you are deciding what the project should be, be careful to think far enough ahead to create changes that you can build on in the future. It’s a holistic approach that can save time and money!

What’s on your remodeling ‘wish’ list?

I’m assuming that everyone reading this has a full staff of personal assistants to do chores for them like I do….

Ok, you can stop laughing. I don’t have a team of people to do my chores either.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all have a team of elves that lived to do our dishes as we slept? Or maybe a magic wand that you could wave over a litter box to make it instantly clean? How about an automated bed maker that worked with the push of a button? I’d take any of these in a heartbeat.

But honestly, as much as I hate chores, nothing is more frustrating to me than not being able to take care of them myself. I want nothing to do with household tasks on days when I’m feeling great. But during the weeks that I was recovering from surgery I wanted nothing more than to be able to sweep my kitchen and vacuum my bedroom.

It’s very easy to take reaching and bending for granted until you can’t do either without pain. A long term illness that zaps your strength and energy can make chores hard to finish, let alone start. However neither of these has to be the end of independence. People have been finding solutions to these problems for years, whether their abilities have changed due to age or an accident.

For the most part, people have been finding these solutions after the fact. Imagine if your home was already designed to make your least favorite chores easier. What would be different?

For me, the number one improvement I want for my apartment is a full sized dishwasher. We currently wash all of our dishes by hand and a dishwasher would save me a ton of time. Still… I wouldn’t complain if we had elves on hand to fill it at night and empty it in the morning.