Visiting a loved one in a care home, what helps
Nobody teaches you how to visit a parent in a care home. You just turn up, do your best, and drive home feeling something you cannot quite name. Sometimes relieved. Sometimes sad. Sometimes both, on the same visit.
This is a piece about visiting well as part of our 4 part guide to starting the care home process. Not visiting more. Well. There is a difference, and the difference matters, both for your loved one and for you.
The visit that helps most is not the longest one
Families often assume that a good visit is a long visit, this is not always the case. For older people, especially those who tire quickly, a two hour visit is often too much. They perk up for the first hour, and then flag, and then get overtired, and go to bed a bit fragile.
An hour is usually plenty, sometimes forty minutes. If you have driven a long way, take a break in the middle. Go and have a cup of tea, come back for the second half. That is much kinder than one long, tiring stretch.
Frequency matters more than length. Three short visits a week beat one long one, if you can manage it. If you cannot, please do not feel guilty. One good visit is worth much more than two rushed ones.
Choose the time of day carefully
Most older people are at their best in the late morning or the early afternoon. By late afternoon, many are tired. This is a real thing, sometimes called sundowning, and it means the same person who was chatty at 11 can be muddled and low by 4.
Ask the staff when your loved one tends to be at their brightest, and try to visit then. If you can only come after work, that is fine, just do not measure the visit against a morning one. Evening visits are for company, not for big conversations.
Bring something small to do together
The worst visits are the ones where you sit opposite each other and try to have a conversation about news. Both of you run out of things to say. Both of you feel sad.
The best visits have something small at the centre of them.
A cup of tea and a biscuit.
A photo album from years ago. Not new photos of the grandchildren, which can be hard to follow, but old ones from their own life. Their wedding, their first house or a holiday. Old photos unlock memory in a way new ones cannot.
A walk in the garden if the weather is kind.
A hymn or a song they always loved, played quietly on your phone.
Something to eat that they used to love. A slice of proper Battenberg. A ginger biscuit. Ask the staff first if there are any restrictions.
A hand to hold. Do not underestimate this. For someone who lives with fewer physical touches than they used to, a warm hand on theirs for half an hour is one of the most powerful things you can offer.
If your loved one has memory problems, doing something together is even more important. It takes the pressure off remembering, and lets you just be together.
What to talk about, and what not to
Do not test their memory. Do not say "do you remember when". Do not say "you told me that already". These are all versions of saying "you are getting worse", even when you do not mean it that way.
Instead, talk about the past as though you are remembering it together. "Do you know what I was thinking about the other day. That time we went to Dawlish and it rained the entire week." That invites them to join in without any pressure to perform.
Talk about people. Family, friends, neighbours from years ago. Tell them what is going on with the grandchildren, in small manageable bites. Bring gossip. People love gossip at any age.
Avoid difficult news if you can. Family arguments, financial worries, work stress. They cannot help, and they will worry. Save those things for a friend.
If they are having a bad day and are teary or confused, do not try to fix it. Just be with them. Hold their hand. Say "I know. I am here." That is enough.
Bring the outside world in
For someone who does not go out as much any more, small pieces of the outside world are a gift. A jar of blackberries you picked. A single flower from the garden. A photo on your phone of the sea at Teignmouth on a bright day. A little bag of things from their favourite shop.
These are not big gestures. They are proof that they are still part of your life, and that your life still has them in it.
Look after yourself too
Visiting is emotional work. If you leave every visit exhausted or sad, that will show, and it will make the next visit harder for both of you.
Give yourself ten minutes in the car park before you go in and ten minutes before you drive off. Notice how you are feeling. Do not pretend you are fine if you are not.
It is also alright, on some visits, to not stay very long. If you are having a hard week, a quick cheerful visit is better than a long strained one. Your loved one would rather see you happy for half an hour than tired for two.
And please do not measure yourself against anyone else. Some families visit every day. Some once a fortnight. Life circumstances are different. What matters is that when you are there, you are properly there.
What Somerforde does to help
We keep visiting easy at Somerforde. There are no set visiting hours. You can come when it suits you and them. There are quiet corners you can sit in if you want a private conversation, and a garden for when the weather is good. If you want to bring a friend or a grandchild or a well-behaved dog, tell us in advance and we will make sure it works.
Because we are family-run, we tend to know families quickly. If we open the door and you look tired, we will probably ask if you want a cup of tea before you go through. That is not a script. It is just how our home works.
If your loved one is with us, we hope this is useful. If they are not, and you are thinking about it, please know that any home worth choosing will want you to visit often and easily. That is one of the questions worth asking on a tour.
Whatever you are carrying today, thank you for caring the way you do. That is the whole thing.