A Respite Dementia Care Service for a few hours, days, months or even permanently

Written by Tamsin Hudson, Dementia Care Adviser.

I often talk to family carers about the importance of self-care when you are looking after a person with dementia, and their typical response is “I don’t have time for that”.  As a family carer, you will be spending so much of your time thinking about your person with dementia’s day to day needs; the list can be long, and just thinking about it can be overwhelming sometimes.  This type of care ‘cannot wait’.

By way of an example, if your person with dementia needs your help getting to the bathroom in time, you have to stop what you are doing and support them to the bathroom right away.  If they need your assistance to dress or wash themselves in the shower, you get that done possibly before tending to your own needs in the morning.  Your normal daily routine is out of kilter, once you have time to think about it, still sitting in your nightie at the kitchen table just before lunch!  You have put their needs first but who is there to support you?  Family may live far away, they may be busy at work or with their children, and they can only manage a monthly visit to see you.  

Your day continues to run away with you, until you collapse into bed and think about all the household tasks you didn’t manage to do today.  Well, there is always tomorrow for the laundry mountain and the washing up that you couldn’t manage today...

If any of this is sounding all too familiar, the thought of a place in a Care Home may be floating into your mind.  Your person with dementia could go there to have a ‘little holiday’ while you  recuperate at home for a couple of weeks.  Except that your person with dementia may not understand why they need to leave their own home, and they may be even more confused once they get there as everything is different.  Nothing is familiar anymore.

This is when you need to be calling us.  We can provide a Respite Dementia Care Service for a few hours, or days or months or even permanently.  We will provide a dementia-trained Care Expert who will support your person with dementia (washing, shaving, dressing, doing their hair) or who will support you both by cooking meals and keeping on top of all the housework.  If you need to take a break away from your home, they will be there caring for your person with dementia so that you can rest, recuperate and restore your own batteries.  

All that would be required is a spare bedroom if the Care Expert is to live-in.  Often this type of care and support is required after a hospital stay when the person with dementia may need even more help to wash, dress and get around the house.  In hospital, they may have had all this extra support provided by a team of nurses and healthcare assistants, but at home it is just you.  

This is just one example of when you may need an extra pair of hands to help you manage everything.  Another example could be to help you schedule in some proper ‘me time’ to go away on holiday or visit your best friends that you have not seen for years.  

Self-care does not have to be a day at a Spa (although that would of course be wonderful and may I come along too!)  It can be a long uninterrupted soak in the bath.  Or a nice walk somewhere different, on your own, so that you can lose yourself in nature and switch off for a while.  It could be having an afternoon all to yourself to read that book you have wanted to start, but never seem to have the time.  A Live-In Care Respite option will give you the time to do all these things, and you need this break just as much as your person with dementia needs the extra support.  The best thing about this type of care is that it comes to you both in the comfort of your own home.

For more on Dementia and our services: Dementia Care Advice Service