Guide helps minimise stress of moving into care

A new book on the often stressful and difficult process of moving into a care home provides a practical guide to help those involved navigate their way through the process.

A new book on the often stressful and difficult process of moving into a care home provides a practical guide to help those involved navigate their way through the process.

Moving into Residential Care, a Practical Guide for Older People and Their Families, uses material from interviews with older people who have recently moved into care, as well as a review of existing literature, to produce a guide that takes the reader along every step of the journey from thinking about moving into care to finding a facility, making the move and settling in.

It also provides advice for people from culturally diverse backgrounds, the LGBTI community and people with dementia.

Co-author Professor Colleen Doyle from NARI says the book uses uses case studies and quotes from people who have been through the experience. She says the book not only prepares for people who are transitioning into care but also increases empathy for families and care staff involved along the way.

“It came about from some research that we were doing with people who had recently moved into residential aged care, talking about what helped in that experience and what didn’t help, and hearing their stories about how they’d managed to get used to their new surroundings,” she told Community Care Review.

“Residential care has a lot of bad press and few people would choose to live in a communal setting like that, but given that people aren’t always going to be able to live independently their whole lives, we tried to think how do you make the best of it and improve your resilience in those circumstances.”

Professor Doyle talked to Australian Ageing Agenda about her research here

Moving into Residential Care by Colleen Doyle and Gail Roberts is available via the National Library of Australia at catalogue.nla.gov.au and online book retailers.

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Tags: aged-care, books, carers, Colleen-Doyle, moving-into-residential-care,

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