Home Visitors
By Toni Wilcox
“I’m worried about Mom. She lives all by herself and I don’t know how she’s getting her grocery shopping done.”
“You know, I’ve enjoyed riding the bus to town for years. But these days it just takes too much out of me to be on the go all day long.”
“Our neighbor doesn’t seem to be getting out and about like he used to.”
Since 1993 Cindy Brummer has responded to calls just like these through the Home Visitor Program of Itasca County. Brummer and her south county counterpart, Cindy Stapleton, visit seniors aged sixty and older who need help living comfortably in their own homes.
As Americans live longer, healthier lives they’ve come to assume that their elder years can be spent in the family home, and with good reason. Nationwide more than seventy percent of seniors will spend the rest of their lives in the home where they spent their sixty-fifth birthday. Far from the last resort of those who can’t afford to escape to sunnier climes, seniors are choosing to “age in place”; to stay close to family and friends and to participate in the activities they enjoyed before retirement.
This can be a little challenging in rural areas like ours, but that’s where the Home Visitors can help. “We don’t provide services so much as put people and services together,” says Brummer. “For the person who isn’t physically up to riding a bus and staying in town all day, we can arrange a senior companion who will drive and help make the trip a nice afternoon out with a friend.”
Last year Brummer and Stapleton visited 270 seniors averaging three to four visits per host.
“They aren’t clients or patients, but hosts, because we are guests in their homes” says Brummer. “Whether they call us, or we make the first contact because someone made a referral, we follow the senior’s lead.” That lead could vary from just touching base every six months or so, to helping find the right combination of medical treatment and group therapy to deal with depression or anxiety. Brummer notes; “When we started fourteen years ago it was with the idea that many older people were being treated for one illness but they also had secondary problems, like mental health issues, that made getting well harder.”
“They would be in and out of the hospital when what they really needed was some counseling or just relatively simple help at home,” she adds.
Call the Home Visitor at (218) 245-1699 or (218) 327-0768 for Highway 2 and southern Itasca County.
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