Over lunch with Arthur a longtime friend, I was saddened to hear how his adult children are plotting to sell his acreage and use the money to move him into a senior facility “to make his life easier.” No coincidence we shared lunch at his favorite spot on a rustic wharf a few hundred yards from the beloved home he’d occupied for decades. While I wanted to assure Art that he’d likely benefit from the move, instead I quickly recalled several other seniors I know who agreed to move into eldercare, and soon after began a downward spiral mentally and emotionally. It didn’t take long for one friend to lose her wit, along with gusto to live with grit.
Art’s grimace over the beer he sipped on the wharf as if to dim the inevitable, said it all. It no longer seemed to matter that he’d valued autonomy he enjoyed during years of senior decision-making in the steel industry, and in volunteer work he did in the community and with Meals on Wheels. Art especially liked to live the Rotary tenet he held for years, by often asking the central Rotarian question: “Is it fair to all concerned?” Wherever the answer was a sincere, “Yes,” Art was in for the long run!
Now he was a mere number among the many seniors who dreaded losing day-to-day freedoms the rest of us often take for granted until they disintegrate. As we sat together while waves hit up against rugged logs that supported the wharf though, I feared for Art’s lack of genuine support in his final years of a life well lived. Our conversation and my friend’s disappointing story of loss, led me to wonder why we assume that senior facilities in their current structure, are good for seniors. Rigorous rules appear made for a rigid system averse to the kind of risks healthy seniors enjoy, as mental or emotional health appear not to count for much in senior facilities.
And if autonomy is essential to wellbeing, it’s time to build both into care options for our elders.
As a recently retired senior myself, I’ve grown more and more concerned over money-making senior centers that rob elderly residents like Arthur of their last bastion of freedom, their autonomy. With baby boomers increasing in recent years, with mental health in decline after a pandemic, and with more seniors reticent to move into care facilities, it’s time to balance investor profits with possibilities for aging senior residents.
Most of us agree that baby boomers altered and improved communities, as the second largest group alive after millennials. However, as boomers age they become targets for investors who see industry opportunities. We’ve failed to recognize or ensure senior benefits such as support for their immense growth mindset. The aging brain cultivates grace and grit with nurturing brain boosters found in far too few assisted living facilities.
No surprise that there’s a growing demand for alternative senior care services. Beyond facilities such as assisted living homes that enroll vast numbers of our aging population, often against their will, lie possibilities that provide long term solutions to senior care challenges. Care that increasingly promotes calm and comforting services that align with seniors’ tastes and talents. Brain boosting interactions that help to sharpen seniors’ mental and emotional strengths, as well as shore up weakening cognitive domains. All of these growth mindset possibilities for an aging population can be paired with daily routine reminders, regular meal preparation help, and assistance with challenging household chores.
Perhaps we could fund personal home care services to better serve an expanding and diverse aging population who tend to live longer, and who seek fewer senior care regulations in exchange for more flexibility in payment and care giving options for their latter years.
Imagine the benefits of more skilled nurses, experts in continuing care, and assisted living residents who enjoy the delight of sleeping in their own beds and in familiar settings in their frail, yet fantastic final years.
Assisted living facilities could still be an option for seniors who need more help with personal care services such as bathroom routines, meal preparation, keeping medical appointments, or cleaning their residences, for instance. But why are retirement communities that tend to reduce seniority to senility so widespread among elderly who don’t need 24/7 medical supervision. What about those agile, alert seniors like my friend Art, who have no desire to suffer mundane, prescribed daily operational routines that result in a lack of autonomy at an immense cost to all of us.
Investors claim the growing senior care industry offers money making opportunities in mass retirements of baby boomers. Medical facilities expand healthcare technology and investment opportunities for this huge tsunami of elderly who will soon fill the senior care industry. But as a senior who has seen far too many fails for fragile friends I’ve been considering other directions that enhance seniors’ mental, emotional, social, spiritual and physical health. Who would disagree we can do better for those who go before us?
Assisted living facilities should not prosper business communities in ways that leave behind and underserve its elderly population’s tastes and talents. Investing in the senior care industry will not likely be easy. And problems such as Coronavirus makes it even more difficult.
Yet it’s no surprise that senior facility occupancy levels continue to drop as more people like my friend Arthur shy away from current service providers. Why settle for money-grabbing facilities that simply increase costs to seniors who sadly experience a serious decline in autonomy in return? For Art there seemed to be no alternative, but I feel convinced that if we put heads together with senior colleagues, we can re-imagine finer opportunities to value and reward so many seniors we treasure among family and friends.
What if we calculate the profitability to seniors first as a launching pad to explore alternatives to outmoded assisted living facilities? What if we show tangible support for senior services that reflect far more freedom for our elders to live out those final years as golden pathways that optimize wisdom from a lifetime of learning and living in a freer, more appreciative world? Could we savor the fun and freedom so many seniors have earned, and all are worthy of exploring through a growth mindset that optimizes genuine senior autonomy in their golden years?