Everyone has their own preferences, but I have definitely seen some favorites when it comes to what people seem to want to have around them a little while after they have arrived to live indefinitely in an Adult Family Home. Pictures of family members, a handful of memories, and little else.

“Wake Staff” is a term commonly used in the Adult Family Home world that refers to staff who stay on premises overnight, not just during daytime hours. It usually also implies that there are caregiver staff on site round the clock, not just when it’s dark. And what makes this feature of an Adult Family Home most valuable is, it means your loved one is always just a few yards away from professional help in the event of any emergency.

One of the biggest challenges grown children of aging parents face is when and how to move their beloved parent into a more suitable living situation than having them stay with them indefinitely. Most of that challenge comes from guilt, probably, and also the deep-seated unwillingness to let go of one phase of their life and move in the next. It all seems so sudden and final. Whatever the emotional reasoning around such a potential move of residence, there are some very good reasons you can focus on, and it will help you make the best decision.

Over the past decades, crimes rates have dropped in the Puget Sound area, as well as across the country. But you’re probably meaning the question in terms of the health and safety issues than may arise for an elderly person living in a home, away from their loved ones, and at the mercy and quality of the caregivers who work to take care of them.

There are certainly plenty of laws within the state of Washington that oblige managers of an Adult Family Home to do certain things a certain way. There is, for example, a law that stipulates there may be no more than six residents living in a single residence. That doesn’t, of course, include the working staff – only the full-time residents who are paying to stay there. There are also many smaller rules about hygiene, food preparation, space, lighting and safety.

An Adult Family Home is an ideal place to live when it has become challenging living in the home of your adult children, but still, you’re not willing or able to live on your own. An Adult Family Home gives you all of the support you need – round the clock, too, if your Adult Family Home has what they call ‘wake staff’ – and caregivers are often retired registered nurses. This gives the residents an excellent and secure place to live, no matter what their health condition.

Unless your father needs the services provided by an actual hospital, it is likely he will do fine in an Adult Family Home. A good Adult Family Home is designed and serviced to feel very much like a home, complete with safety, security and a host of features that speak directly to a senior’s needs. If, on the other hand, a resident does need the services of a hospital, those services can be called upon when needed.

An Adult Family Home is perhaps the most ideal place to live when a person is suffering from dementia, of which Alzheimer’s is just one form. Because many forms of dementia centers around some form of memory loss, keeping the ‘list if things to remember’ to a minimum can be a great stress reducer. In an Adult Family Home, there is a limited number of people’s names, for instance, because there is a limit of only six persons – by law in the State of Washington – allowed to reside in any one residence.