Assessing a Relative's Care Needs

It is helpful if you make notes of all the various pieces of information you learn about your relative. Thus new knowledge will help you find the right care home for them.

Try to establish how your relative copes with daily living, and whether they have any help from social services such as a home help.

Try to find out in which way they are incapacitated. Are they mobile at all, or do they have any appliances such as a walking aid to help them? Some people have trolleys so they can transport their food and drink or other things and use it to help support themselves at the same time.

Is your relative able to prepare their own meals, take their food and drink to the table, sit down, eat and drink without help?

Do they suffer from any illness that requires a special diet, such as diabetes? Food allergies also have to be considered so alternative foods or special diets can be prepared for them. The matron needs to know in order to instruct the chef and ask them to visit the new resident.

Can your relative get to and from the toilet by themselves? Sometimes it takes too long for this to be accomplished and elimination takes place before the toilet is reached. If the matron knows about this problem arrangements can be made for a resident to be taken to the toilet at regular intervals before they are desperate to eliminate. Hopefully this will solve the problem.

Take notes about the amount of pain, if any, your relative suffers from. It would be useful to find out what medication they take to keep them relatively pain free. Severe pain is sometimes treated at a pain clinic, to which their doctor would refer them if it was thought necessary.

A few people who are not really able to care for themselves any longer develop pressure sores on their sacrum, elbows, heels and other places, in fact anywhere where there is constant unrelieved pressure on the body. Sacral sores can be made worse by incontinence. The matron will want to know if your relative is suffering from any skin condition including pressure sores so the problem can be assessed by the doctor and treated.