Index: Giving or Receiving CARE
REFERENCE: Tips, Hacks, Resources and Insights.
Hello, Dear Reader! Welcome to our new Carer Mentor community members!
I’m Victoria. You can read why I’m publishing Carer Mentor here: Who Started Carer Mentor and Why?
Index for Giving / Receiving Care.
This index focuses on the acts, practical information, and hacks/tips related to giving or receiving care.
Here are a few golden rules I use:
It’s vital that both the person giving and receiving care are safe. For example, learn how to lift a person safely from a seated position.
Care, for me, is not about doing things in the most ‘productive’, quickest, or most effortless way possible (because we know tech/hacks). Caring and care itself are not transactions or tasks to be completed. Sometimes, enabling the routine and habits that a loved one is used to is caring in the form of respecting and prioritising their wishes above our own. We gently navigate incremental improvements for safety, ease and quality of everyday living actions.
Giving and receiving care is a continuous balancing game between safety, needs, and wants. What we need and what we want can become easily conflicted. For example, my father didn’t want to use a toilet riser seat (a frame that sits over a toilet with handrails). However, he acquiesced to using it when I calmly explained that it helped us lift him off the toilet and was safer for us both. He accepted, out of concern for our safety, LOVE.
A constant trade-off is Risk versus Benefit. When the risks outweigh the benefits of doing something, we set a boundary. I have always tried to explain the context, discuss and align with Dad and now Mum. I’d always try to go the extra mile to fulfil their wish, but I’ve learnt where I set a firm line. This line is set where I can easily predict that my energy, stress and difficulties in trying to achieve something exceed the value/goal/benefit. Hence, a firm ‘NO’.
These four rules give you a brief glimpse into how the years of caregiving have influenced my decision-making. This is our process of triaging what’s possible.
The calmest periods are when we have had a lovely, boring routine and can focus less on safety and more on wants and benefits! We can plan and dedicate more time to ‘sorting things out’ / prime ourselves again during these periods.
I hope these articles can help you and your loved ones with the practicalities of CARE.
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INDEX OF ARTICLES
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I can really appreciate this, Victoria. Plus, it changes as our loved ones' care shifts. Being able to communicate everyone's needs and set those boundaries has been a learning experience for me. Setting boundaries and taking care of myself has been a game changer! I think it has improved my relationship with my mom.
Yes it is a balancing act - keeping them and everyone else against what THEY want. Wonderful article. Thank you.