Occupational therapy for seniors covers five ordinary parts of a day: bathing, dressing, cooking, cleaning and money management. If your mother has stopped cooking for herself, or your father now takes most of the morning to get dressed, those are the tasks an occupational therapist works on. At Ascend Rehabilitation, occupational therapy sits inside our Outpatient Services for older adults across the Twin Cities, alongside physical therapy and speech therapy.
You do not need to work out which kind of therapy your parent needs before you ask about it. You only need to be able to say what has changed.
What is geriatric occupational therapy?
Geriatric occupational therapy is occupational therapy for older adults. It begins with the tasks a person does every day and works on the ones that have become harder to finish.
The three therapy disciplines divide the day between them. Knowing the split makes the conversation with a physician a short one:
- Physical therapy: posture, balance, strength, pain management, mobility in and out of furniture, walking, stairs
- Occupational therapy: bathing, dressing, cooking, cleaning, money management
- Speech therapy: speaking, understanding and swallowing
So if your father is unsteady on the stairs, that belongs to physical therapy. If he manages the stairs fine but no longer manages the shower, that belongs to occupational therapy. Plenty of older adults are seen by both, and the full set of our senior therapy services sits on one page.
We look at the whole person, including current health needs, medical history and immediate and future goals.
What does occupational therapy for seniors cover?
Five areas. They are worth taking one at a time, because families almost always notice one of them before the others.
Bathing and dressing
These two are usually the hardest to bring up, and the ones families put off. You might notice showers happening less often. A cardigan going on over yesterday’s shirt. Buttons, socks, shoes and the step into a tub taking longer than they did a year ago.
Occupational therapy addresses washing and dressing directly. Not around the subject, not as a conversation about dignity: the work of getting washed and getting dressed, task by task.
Cooking and cleaning
A kitchen tells you a great deal. Cereal three meals a day. A pan nobody has lifted in a month. Mail in piles, laundry that waits for your visit, a fridge with four open jars of the same thing.
That can look like someone losing interest. It can also be one step in the middle of a task that has become hard, so the whole task gets dropped. Which of the two it is, is worth saying out loud at the appointment. Occupational therapy covers cooking and cleaning as themselves, not as a stand-in for something else.
Money management
Managing money is on the occupational therapy list too, and it is the one families raise last. Bills set aside unopened. A checkbook that stopped balancing. Two payments on the same account and none on another.
Money management here means the paperwork and the routine of paying for things. If you have quietly taken that over for a parent, say so when therapy is discussed. It is the kind of detail that otherwise never reaches the person doing the therapy.
When should you ask about occupational therapy for a parent?
Ask when a task your parent used to do without thinking now takes planning, help or a great deal longer. You do not have to wait for a fall, a diagnosis or a crisis to raise it, and you do not have to be certain that therapy is the answer.
Our Outpatient Services are for people over the age of 65 who have been prescribed therapy for their continued health and mobility. Take specifics to the physician who knows your parent’s history: what your parent could do in the spring, what they do now, and which of the five areas above it falls under.
What if the change followed an illness, injury or a stay in care?
This is often where the question starts. Somebody comes out of a stay somewhere and the first week at home does not go the way the family pictured it.
A large portion of clients who require home-based services have completed a stay at a short-term, inpatient transitional care unit or at a long-term care facility. If your parent is in that position now, the discharge conversation is the right place to ask which therapies are being arranged and where they will take place.
What should you do if you notice changes at home?
Write down what you have actually seen, over a week or two if you have the time. “Mom has not used the oven since August” is worth more to a therapist than “Mom is struggling”.
Then have the conversation with your parent before you have it about them. Ask which tasks they have been finding hardest and which ones they want back. People are usually more candid than their families expect, and the answer shapes what therapy works on.
How does therapy work at Ascend?
We are a therapy provider. We deliver therapy inside partner senior care communities, in outpatient clinics, and in clients’ homes, and we do not own or run the communities we work in.
Where does therapy happen?
- Outpatient Services: clinic-based physical, occupational, speech, aquatic and massage therapy for older adults, for people over the age of 65 who have been prescribed therapy
- Home-Based Services: specialized home-based services for older adults, delivered in the comfort of your home through our partnerships with home care agencies
- Inpatient Services: traditional inpatient physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy with programming specialized for the senior population, in residential, transitional and short-stay settings
- Wellness & Fitness Services: group and individual fitness and wellness programming, for residents and community members
Which one suits your parent depends on the therapy that has been prescribed and on where they are living right now. Those two facts settle it more often than anything else.
What is a Safe-At-Home Assessment?
A Safe-At-Home Assessment is a therapy visit in the client’s own home. A therapist observes four things:
- Getting in and out of bed
- Using a chair
- Managing stairs
- Preparing meals
Those four get watched in the rooms where they actually happen, rather than asked about in a clinic. A Safe-At-Home Assessment is considered a therapy visit and the cost is typically covered by insurance when ordered by a physician.
How can you prepare for the conversation?
Three things, and none of them take long.
First, name the tasks. Bathing, dressing, cooking, cleaning, money management: say which ones have changed and when you first noticed.
Second, say where your parent lives and who else is in the house on an average day. That is what decides whether therapy makes more sense in a clinic or at home.
Third, bring your parent’s own list. The tasks they want back are worth naming first, and they are not always the ones the family would have chosen.
Frequently asked questions
Who are your Outpatient Services for?
They are for people over the age of 65 who have been prescribed therapy for their continued health and mobility.
How is occupational therapy different from physical therapy?
Physical therapy covers posture, balance, strength, pain management, mobility in and out of furniture, walking and stairs. Occupational therapy covers bathing, dressing, cooking, cleaning and money management. Many older adults are seen by both, and the two work alongside each other.
Can family caregivers take part in occupational therapy?
Yes, and what you bring is information nobody else has. You know which day of the week the cooking stopped and which drawer the unopened mail goes in. Tell the therapist what you have seen at home and what your parent has said they want to manage on their own again.
Can occupational therapy happen at home instead of a clinic?
It can. Our Home-Based Services are specialized home-based services for older adults, delivered in the comfort of your home through our partnerships with home care agencies. We are the therapy provider in that arrangement, not the home care agency.
What happens after a stay in a transitional care unit?
A large portion of clients who require home-based services have completed a stay at a short-term, inpatient transitional care unit or at a long-term care facility. If a stay is ending soon, ask at the discharge conversation which therapies have been ordered, how often they run, and whether they will take place in a clinic or at home.
Talk to us about occupational therapy
Our goal is to keep older adults safe, active and independent. Contact us for specific information about our services or to schedule an appointment.
Schedule an appointment or call 763.531.5039.