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 By Melissa Smith; South County Times
The American Red Cross is well known for its emergency medical services and helping hand in disaster situations. Lesser known is a care program it offers for seniors as close as Crestwood.
As medical advances are helping people to live longer, more adults are faced with finding a way to care for aging parents. The decision to place a parent in a nursing home can be a difficult and emotionally distressing one. The Red Cross now offers an option that can provide day care while allowing a loved one to return home at night.
The St. Louis Chapter of the American Red Cross runs an Adult Care and Enrichment Program especially designed for seniors in need of daily care. Started in 1986, the program operates at four area locations, including the Crestwood location at 9373 Garber Road, at the Episcopal Church of the Advent.
“The program is designed for people who have had some physical or cognitive setback,” said Program Director Sylvia Nissenboim. “It is not for independent seniors who are out there still driving around and working. The program provides a higher level of care than what you would find in senior centers where the people can just come and go.”
This higher level of care involves on-site nurses who are able to address medical concerns, distribute medicine and assist with personal care issues. There is also occupational and physical therapy available and covered by Medicare. The program provides social workers who can help seniors cope with limited independence.
“For seniors, because of health conditions and not being independent anymore, the benefits of the program are enormous,” Nissenboim said. “They get to develop a social life again, they get emotional support to keep from becoming depressed and we help them maintain their health.”
But the program doesn’t just benefit seniors. It also benefits their caregivers. According to Nissenboim, 60 percent of caregivers also have full-time jobs. This means that many of them are doing double-duty, or even triple-duty, if they have children to take care of. By enrolling their family member in the program, caregivers can help relieve their own stress and depression and become much more relaxed and productive at work.
“The employed caregiver can focus entirely on their work and trust that their family member is being taken care of,” Nissenboim said. “They won’t have to worry about calling home to check up on mom or dad, or leaving work to take them to the doctor. They can get rest from the daily concern of their parent’s health.”
The same social workers who can help seniors cope with no longer being independent can also help caregivers cope with the stress and depression often associated with caring for an ailing parent. As a part of the program, caregivers can attend monthly group sessions, receive referrals for additional services and find out general information about caregiving.
As its name suggests, the program provides not only care for seniors, but also enrichment.
“The day is pretty structured and there are a variety of activities designed to meet everyone’s interest,” Nissenboim said. “It is called parallel programming.”
The typical day begins with breakfast, followed by exercise and some sort of activity, such as field trips, pet therapy or inter-generational programs. Then a hot lunch is served and followed by more activities. Massages are available, and once a month a beautician visits the center.
According to Nissenboim, the program also benefits the community at large. Because 24-hour nursing home care costs twice what adult day care does, the program helps save the government money. It also helps eliminate the emotional upset usually associated with placing a loved one in a nursing home. But most important, the program helps keep seniors at home and in the community.
“The program keeps folks in the community where they want to be,” Nissenboim said. “It keeps the neighborhoods mixed with younger and older folks, which keeps the neighborhoods healthy. For children in the neighborhood, who don’t have grandparents living nearby, oftentimes an older neighbor can serve as a substitute for that role.”
As adults increasingly spend more years caring for their parents than their children, Nissenboim sees a growing need for programs similar to the Adult Care and Enrichment Program.
“The needs of seniors are just going to grow exponentially in the next few years. Adult day care is going to be a great option for many people,” she said.
The program operates Monday through Friday, from 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Transportation is provided to and from the center. For more information, visit www.redcrossstl.org, or call 516-2776.
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