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Services For The Elderly Alzheimer Victim

Article Summary: There are indeed a variety of community services for the elderly. While some programs serve only individuals older than a specified age, others may serve the spouse of a person who qualifies. Some senior citizen programs not only directly assist the person afflicted with a chronic dementing illness, but can also be of immense value to family caregivers and other family members.

Chronological age is the sole criterion for many social services that may aid the Alzheimer victim. There are indeed a variety of community services for the elderly. While some programs serve only individuals older than a specified age, others may serve the spouse of a person who qualifies. Some senior citizen programs not only directly assist the person afflicted with a chronic dementing illness, but can also be of immense value to family caregivers and other family members. These services include such things as homemaker assistance, home health care, transportation assistance, home repair, nutrition programs, protective services, and income and property tax reductions. Some communities also offer free or sliding-fee legal aid, eye and dental care, and even free tax preparation assistance to people over sixty years of age. All persons who are over the age of sixty (whether or not they are victims of Alzheimer's disease) automatically qualify for the services provided through the Older Americans Act. Access to these services, which vary from community to community, can best be made through the local Area Agency on Aging, whose exact name may vary from state to state (e.g., Area Council on Aging or Office on Aging).

The local Area Agency on Aging is part of a nationwide network of federally funded offices that contract, advocate, and coordinate a vast collection of local services for persons over sixty years of age. These agencies perform an important "brokerage" function, i.e., they provide liaison activities linking people at various levels of need with the array of programs and services in a community.

A recent development at many local Area Agencies on Aging has been the provision of "case management" services for the elderly. The case management approach offers a "one-stop shopping" resource for meeting the multiple and varied needs of the elderly. Case management can be of immense value to victims of Alzheimer's disease. For example, after a complete assessment of the individual's social, medical, psychological and economic condition, a case manager develops a comprehensive treatment plan. The case manager then monitors the client's progress and makes any necessary adjustments in the plan. Since social services consist of a broad range of often unrelated programs that revolve around a general goal of helping people get the things they need, the case management approach is especially useful in identifying and accessing each needed service while at the same time significantly reducing the frustrations that the social service bureaucracy frequently creates for victims and their caregivers.

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Robert Baird
Get all the information about the Alzheimer's disease , its causes, symptoms and treatment . If you want know how to master a particular situation of Alzheimer's patient visit http://www.alzheimersadvice.org/