One parent has dementia and the other has no caregiving skills. Now what?

Nor sure where you are located, some areas of the country seem to have an adequate supply of assisted living facilities that can and do accommodate couples. The place I moved my mother to is one of 9 in my town alone that does that. I have met several couples that live there, and they all seem to like it, and appreciate the help they get. My mom is in the most expensive unit, a one bedroom, and with the middle tier level of care her cost is 4900 per month. She can stay there until death, or if she need a feeding tube, ventilator, or permanent IV drip. Which if she reaches that stage, hospice will be called in for palliative care.

No doubt they need to move. While you are looking for the best place see if you can find someone to come in each morning for a couple of hours to make them breakfast, administer medication and get some water in them. a lunch planned and some light housekeeping if wife isn't able to do. Ask the dr for home health to come in weekly to check his vitals and an aid to help with baths. Also keep pt going to help with his balance. A little help goes a long ways when it is consistent.

Adult Foster Care may be the answer. Look for a place where they can be together. These are private homes with a full time staff that cooks, cleans, assists with medications, etc. Care levels vary widely as do the services each home offers. Prices and services vary widely, but these are a great option between them being independent and going in a nursing home.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK BEFORE PLACING YOUR PARENTS THERE!! I have my mom in a great Adult Foster Care home now, but the first one was a disaster. I missed a couple of warning signs....didn't make that mistake twice. Research each place you're considering 10 ways from Sunday. Due your diligence, and you can find a nice place. I now have round the clock care for mom in a great home two blocks from where I live, runs me about $2400 a month. Good luck to you.

Someone with caregiving skills needs to either get guardianship or someone just needs to get guardianship and put the dementia patient into a proper facility where there are staff to specialize in caring for these kinds of people.

I faced the same type of dilemma with my foster dad when he developed dementia but I didn't know how to handle those kinds of people. Long story short, a lawyer finally got guardianship, and though I don't really agree on how the staff are handling the dementia patients at times, it makes me sorry dad couldn't have had a more loving facility caring for him. If you have no caregiving skills especially for a dementia patient, there's no possible way you're going to be able to do this on your own without some kind of proper help. You may try carrying on with your normal life as usual and doing common things that absolutely need done, but in the end there's just no way you're going to be able to handle all the episodes that will become more frequent. If you don't even know how to spot signs of dementia, there's no way you're going to know what to do as it's developing until it becomes too obvious to not be able to spot it. By then you find yourself in a position of feeling like you're a deer caught in the headlights because you just weren't prepared for this. Not knowing you would ever need to handle someone with dementia, you may find yourself in a position of realizing you need help. You may call around repeatedly not knowing how to call out of all of the resources out there and when the person has no immediate family, things can be even harder for the inexperienced person who's stuck in the situation having to care for a demented person all alone. They can feel trapped when episodes start and the accusations start to fly even if those accusations are false. It can be stressful for any inexperienced person to be stuck in such a situation when the proper channels are out there but you can't find them for quite a while. Multiple trips to the APS maybe of little help as the dementia seemingly rapidly worsens within a very short time, and before you know it, the demented person becomes a totally different person that you just don't know. You may still love them, but you just don't know them anymore because the person they become is not them. If you're inexperienced, you just don't know what to do or how to handle these kinds of situations. Relief comes when the right people finally step in and take over. All you can do is hope and pray that your loved one is in the hands of the most loving people possible. 

Be very wary if there happens to be immediate family out there who may not even know their parent is still alive. Strangers can worm them their way in, gain trust, then gain access to bank accounts and other assets, only to take advantage of the elder and possibly dispose of property and  other stuff that should go to family. Someone having only POA of a demented person or someone with Alzheimer's, this is a big red flag, especially if the person has either had financial trouble or has previously gotten in trouble for taxes or some other money related issue. These are the kinds of people you'll have to be very wary of. If they get a hold of anything, you may have to get the legal system involved. 

There's only one problem with a demented person where eating and drinking is involved: 

You can lead them to food and water and even put it in front of them, but you can't make them eat or drink. Even all the encouragement in the world won't stack up if the person just won't eat or drink. This can leave you worried about one day walking in and finding them dead and there's not a thing you can do if you happen to be alone in the situation

When my friends, for whom I am their POA, needed to leave their condo due to the wife's incontinence and wandering and frontal temporal dementia, I had found a one bedroom memory care apartment in an assisted living place for them. After several sessions explaining the need to do this for the care of the wife, we got them there. They had to be together because the wife constantly looked for her husband if he wasn't visible to her. This arrangement worked well. After the wife died, the husband is quite happy to continue living in that same apartment, and with poor short term memory, needs the kind of care they provide. I went to 8 or 9 assisted living/memory care places before I found one that had a choice of a two-bedroom, one-bedroom or efficiency apartment in their memory care area. None of the newer facilities provided that option so two people could live together in the memory care area, just this older facility that converted one of their assisted living floors to memory care. He gets good care, is monitored carefully and is happy. I am pleased he enjoys interacting with others at meal times so he socializes 3 times a day. He doesn't want to do anything else, so he spends his time watching TV and reading his newspaper and magazines that I bring over to him. As long as he is happy and the care is good, I feel relieved and can now deal with emptying out and selling his condo. I never realized how big a job that would be. The care is expensive--some $7400/month--but I can see being able to pay this for several years. After 18 months, the facility will accept public financing, too, so he never has to leave even when he runs out of money. They provide care up through hospice, so going to a different place will not be necessary. I am very thankful for having found such a facility that met/meets the needs of my friends so well. They had no children or nearby family who could play this role and after 40 years of friendship, worshipping together, vacationing together, I felt it a privilege to be able to play this role.

I recently toured a assisted living community with a memory care wing. They pointed out to me that there were many couples living there were one spouse still went to work everyday.

As for Independent Living facilities, it all depends on the facility and if said place did offer higher levels of care for extra fees. Also if the facility also had an Assisted Living facility on-site.

My Dad lived at Sunrise Senior Living, in a really nice two bedroom apartment. Eventually he needed some of the higher levels of care... such as med tech for medicine maintenance, and night service to help him have a shower and get ready for bed. Dad was a fall risk, thus the facility had him wear a medical alert pendent [for a fee].

Eventually Dad had to move to Assisted Living/Memory Care center in the same complex as his dementia was starting to progress, and so was his falling. It wasn't unusual for a husband and wife to be in the same complex, one in IL and one in AL. Doing that can be very expensive, but worth it if one's budget can handle it.

My parents were able to get a room together in a nursing home. My father was almost bedridden when he entered while my mother was still ambulatory but had some dementia. Now that my father is gone my mother, who is bedridden herself, has a roommate.

well they might both have to go to care place if so make sure family gets the house not the place. & they will not have there life insurance to have the place will get that anything in there name goes to the place .MAKE SURE THAT A FAMILY MEMBER IS A POA POWER OF ATTORNEY the place will not tell you much to find out if they are getting the right drugs i found that out ...they do not tell any one any of that .. this is the 2nd choice so i would wander if the wife would be able to take care of husband ??if she is maybe they can get someone to teach her how to ..they can teach her the tricks to do it i bet if she is able to ..or if family members can take turns to be with them when need be too ..i hate nursing homes it would be my - 100% not to go to so really make sue they get a P.O.A or they will have no say so or rights to them !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As someone who lives in an independent living facility, I don't think this man would be eligible for one. The place I live in requires residents to be able to carry out activities of daily living and be ambulatory. I don't believe a person who is prone to frequent falls would qualify for admission to an independent living facility. The facility I live in occasionally admits people who don't meet these criteria. Often, it is not long before they are told they must find other accommodations.

No elder is discharged from the hospital to their home when there is no one home to care for them.

Yep, sound exactly like my Mom... only she could take care of my Dad.

When my Dad had a mild hear attack, Mom was in denial he had one, she thought it would make her look like a bad wife.... [sigh]. She insisted she could take care of Dad.... hello, she was 91 at the time. They slept in the living room because no way she could help Dad upstairs to the bedrooms. When Dad fell, which was almost daily, she couldn't pick him up. But she still insisted it was "her job" to take care of him.

logicvsheart123, hope someone can convince your Dad's wife that her husband needs a higher level of care, and let's look for a nice place for the both of them. There are independent living facilities around that offer higher level of care for a spouse, and both can live in the same apartment.

MANY facilities accept couples in just that situation. It can be a lifesaver. Couple stays together, the "healthy" one isn't burdened by the non healthy one--meals can be provided, or not. Activities and outings are often available. Nursing care is available.
They can be pricey--check around your area and see what's available.

Facility that accepts couples?