How to spot the less obvious signs of loneliness and steps you can take to bring a little happiness to your loved one.
If you’ve noticed that your elderly parent is getting up later each morning, looking a bit dishevelled, not bothered about food or generally just not being their old self, it could be that they are feeling lonely.
A feeling of loneliness can come about quickly, particularly if there’s been a change, such as losing a loved one or moving away from family and friends.
Or it can creep up slowly and it’s those little tell tale signs that make you realise the problem could be that your parent is experiencing loneliness.
As a grown-up child, what can you do for your elderly parent?
Age UK provides sound advice and information about a wide range of services and support.
At Home Instead our focus is on providing companionship led care. In fact, this approach is what stands us apart from other care providers.
We witness every day the wonderful relationships that are built between our clients and our Care Professionals.
These relationships don’t blossom by chance. We carefully match client and caregiver, to ensure they have something in common, which creates a special connection.
Our two-hours minimum visit, (many care providers are in and out in 15 minutes), means there’s plenty of time for client and caregiver to get to know each other. This is quality time that can be spent chatting at home or enjoying a trip out to a favourite spot.
The wonderful thing about companionship led care and alleviating loneliness, is the wider benefit experienced by the elderly person, because as the feeling of loneliness abates there’s usually an improvement in overall mental and physical wellbeing.
We’d love to help more elderly people within our community who are feeling lonely, so if you have a parent that would benefit from regular visits from our Care Professionals, we’d love to hear from you.
And we’d also love to hear from kind hearted people who would like to join our team as a Care Professional and bring a smile to an elderly person’s face and a little joy and happiness into their lives.
You could make a massive difference to the life of someone experiencing loneliness.