Older Adults Needing Assistance
Maybe it’s your father or mother. Perhaps it’s your own spouse. Maybe it’s a grand parent or your in-laws or someone else in your life. You’ve noticed an older adult having trouble taking care of themselves at home.
It’s not easy to witness these things.
When veterans are having difficulty with their own basic care at home, the best advice would be to encourage them to rely on professional and experienced home care support.
Many disabled older adults are limited in their income. They may be dealing with barely making ends meet with their pension, a disability payment, or some other basic income.
At the end of the month, they might not have anything left over after paying the rent, mortgage, utilities, food, other supplies, and so on.
How to find funds for older adult home care
You may not know about certain programs made available through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) that can be instrumental in helping veterans or their surviving spouses get the financial support they need to pay for daily assistance. One of these programs is a pension called the Aid and Attendance Benefit.
The good news is that a veteran (or a surviving spouse of a veteran) may qualify for monetary assistance from the VA even if he or she wasn’t injured during military service. Not all veterans will qualify for it, but those who served at least 90 days’ active duty with at least one day of their time in service falling during an active time of combat, as defined by Congress (such as World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam war, or the Gulf War) they might just qualify for it. If they served any time during the Gulf War, their minimum time of service has to be two years.
A physician must verify that home care support is absolutely necessary and there are certain income and asset limits.
Sharing this information with that veteran in your life may inspire him or her to get the application process started. It could take many months for approval, so there’s no time to delay.
For more information and to learn about veterans in home care, contact Veteran’s Home Care at (888) 314-6075.