I can manage!
Often our loved ones won’t acknowledge the need for help or accept it, fiercely independent and used to managing they may expect a partner or family to continue providing levels of support that are no longer possible and risk care breaking down or a carer becoming stressed, poorly or collapsing themselves.
I can’t! Carer stress
Remember, helping someone to remain independent means looking after their care givers, those who provide the main support and making sure they have help, time for themselves to allow them to work, look after their own family or go out, even if it is just into the garden with a book!
Care doesn’t have to mean hands on personal care it could be that different services provide regular contact with others – gardener/lawn mowing, window cleaner, cleaner, laundry/ironing, social calls, sitting services, shopping calls or medication reminders.
Encouraging someone to accept help
Trying to encourage someone to acknowledge that they need some help can be tricky but to help someone to remain in their own home support may be necessary and these things are worth considering if you are trying to persuade a loved one to accept help:
- Provide solutions that allow control
- Be empathetic
- Accept and explain your own limits …
- Stay positive. …
- Be sensitive to a possible role reversal. …
- Enlist the help of professionals if necessary. …
- Let them feel like they are making their own decisions.
- Allow for a smoother, slower introduction of services (providing it is safe) and build up gradually
Self-Care
Being prepared to look after yourself and stay independent to prevent the need for ongoing support or risking your situation worsening.
- Be active, move more
- Sleep well
- Eat well
- Keep hydrated – don’t stop drinking because you will need to go more
- Be sociable, feel part of something and laugh
- Learn a new skill
- Appreciate what you already have
- Volunteer to help others, get and stay connected, feel valuable, be valued
- Manage an illness well
Encouraging loved ones to accept care and support
This is a great fact sheet for encouraging and prompting self-care
https://www.selfcareforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2021-Power-SelfCare.pdf
