For many of us in the United States, military service touches our lives, whether through family, friends, or our communities. Our veterans have sacrificed so much and genuinely deserve our heartfelt gratitude, compassion, and care. Sadly, many of these brave individuals feel isolated and face daily challenges with tasks most of us take for granted, like preparing meals, keeping up with household chores, or managing their own wellbeing.
As veterans grow older, it becomes more important to provide the support they need to remain independent at home. After years spent in service to our country, these individuals deserve dignity, comfort, and attentive care. By investing in the health of our senior veterans, we help them enjoy a higher quality of life and honor their commitment to us all.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recognizes these needs and provides veterans home care funding in Salem, OR, to assist servicepeople and their loved ones. What many families don't realize is that long-term care options - including in-home care - are included in programs like ameriCARE's Veteran CARE services.
Today, many of our veterans are vulnerable to a variety of issues that can impact their quality of life. However, through our Veteran CARE services, we're able to provide customized, compassionate care that addresses those issues and provides families like yours with peace of mind. Whether they're returning from combat with new health challenges or simply need an extra hand throughout the day as they age, our team is here to help.
Our agency owners are dedicated to guiding veterans through the process of accessing their benefits and understanding their eligibility. This important service, available at many of our franchise locations, empowers veterans to overcome the often confusing world of entitlements. With empathy and expertise, we strive to honor veterans by delivering personalized care and knowledgeable guidance, supporting them in living fuller, more independent lives.
The VA offers valuable benefits that include coverage for home health aide and homemaker services to veterans who require help with daily living activities. Through collaboration with one of our care partners, we learned that, out of more than 8 million veterans in the VA healthcare system aged 65 and older, only about 150,000 are utilizing this support. This means fewer than 2 percent of eligible veterans are getting the care they've rightfully earned. In some cases, such as with "Aid and Attendance," surviving spouses of veterans may also be eligible for benefits.
ameriCARE is committed to linking veterans and seniors nationwide with compassionate, highly trained caregivers from their own communities. We're proud to say that our mission goes beyond care - in fact, we're happy to help guide veterans and their families through the complexities of the VA system, offering hands-on support during the entire approval process. Many of our franchise owners team members are veterans themselves, who are dedicated to ensuring you or your loved one receives reliable, personalized care at home.
Regardless of how long they served, many military veterans leave service with a litany of health issues - both mental and physical. Some of the most common problems that older veterans face after leaving the military include
Research from the National Center for PTSD reveals that as many as 23% of veterans will experience post-traumatic stress disorder during their lifetime. For some, symptoms may not surface until later years, often following retirement. Notably, the development or worsening of PTSD in older adults has been linked to an increased risk of dementia, suggesting a complex relationship between trauma and cognitive decline as veterans age.
A recent study featured in the National Library of Medicine examined the prevalence of malnutrition among older veterans receiving home-based primary care. The researchers discovered that 15% of these individuals were classified as malnourished, highlighting a significant health concern within this population. Malnutrition in elderly veterans can lead to a range of complications, such as weakened immune response, slower recovery from illness, and increased risk of hospitalization. These issues underscore the need for veterans home care funding in Salem, OR that helps seniors with eating and nutrition challenges.
Studies show that older veterans face a 25% higher likelihood of reporting multiple chronic health issues compared to their nonveteran peers. This trend underscores the unique health challenges veterans may encounter as they age, which often stem from service-related injuries, stress, and more.
Veterans often carry the weight of their service, having endured challenging circumstances and shouldered responsibility for the security of others. As they grow older, preserving their sense of independence becomes deeply intertwined with their mental and emotional health. For many, shifting from self-reliance to accepting help with everyday activities can be a significant adjustment.
A skilled caregiver who understands veterans' unique backgrounds can make this transition smoother. Building trust through respect for personal boundaries, clear communication, and trauma-informed care is essential to fostering a strong partnership between veterans and their in-home caregivers.
Many ameriCARE locations provide their caregivers with specialized training to better support our veterans as veteran cases can be complex and deserve tailored care.
Our caregivers offer support with meal preparation, grocery shopping, and managing dietary needs. They also encourage healthy habits and lifestyle choices, ensuring you or your loved one receives personalized nutrition and wellness guidance.
Tasks like bathing, using the restroom, getting dressed, and maintaining oral hygiene can become challenging because of aging or ongoing health conditions. Our dedicated caregivers are specially trained to assist with these personal routines and always prioritize the veteran's comfort, privacy, and self-esteem.
A tidy living space does more than promote good hygiene. It fosters a sense of comfort, security, and overall wellbeing. Our caregivers help with everyday household tasks, making sure your home remains a safe, inviting, and organized environment.
When driving becomes a challenge, whether for you or a veteran family member, our caregivers step in to help. They can handle errands such as grocery shopping, picking up prescriptions, ensuring appointments are kept, and providing reliable support for many other daily needs.
In-home caregivers from ameriCARE are dedicated to supporting your loved one's mobility and safety. From accompanying them on short walks to guiding them through physical therapy routines, we help promote regular movement and keep them engaged in activities that support their health and independence.
Our caregivers foster engagement by offering gentle support and uplifting encouragement. We create opportunities for veterans to participate in enriching activities, make social connections, and develop genuine bonds with their in-home caregivers.
We can accompany you or the older veteran in your life to medical appointments. We can also help relay any information or instructions provided by doctors.
Coping with the effects of aging, disability, or recovery from injury often involves juggling multiple medications with specific timing and dosages. Our caregivers can help ensure that you or your veteran loved one receives the correct medications at the right times, providing peace of mind while supporting overall health.
Our comprehensive care extends to beloved pets as well. We can assist with daily dog walks, feeding routines, arranging transportation for vet visits, and maintaining pet hygiene. By helping with day-to-day chores like pet care, we help enhance the wellbeing of senior veterans and their animal companions.
While many veterans have a primary care physician or a home health care professional, they may still need a real human connection beyond medical care. Veteran-funded home care can help you or your loved one maintain a more balanced life, one visit at a time. That's where ameriCARE comes in. We work tirelessly to connect dedicated, welltrained, and dependable caregivers to veterans across the United States.
If you're looking for a locally-owned home care company that provides veterans with personalized support, Request More Info today. It would be our honor to help you and your family navigate the VA and to act as your liaison throughout the benefit approval process.
Ready to get started on your journey with ameriCARE? Request More Info today to schedule your consultation and learn more information about how we can assist you or your senior loved one.
Two new theater productions explore women trying to understand their own history. Figuring yourself out is complicated enough under ordinary circumstances; it certainly doesn’t get any easier when the history that shaped you is clouded by lies and misrepresentations. In two current local theater productions, protagonists find themselves struggling to have their lives make sense when they feel that the truth is being buried or twisted.For Becky Nurse (Teresa Sanderson)—the heroine of Sarah Ruhl’s Becky Nu...
Figuring yourself out is complicated enough under ordinary circumstances; it certainly doesn’t get any easier when the history that shaped you is clouded by lies and misrepresentations. In two current local theater productions, protagonists find themselves struggling to have their lives make sense when they feel that the truth is being buried or twisted.
For Becky Nurse (Teresa Sanderson)—the heroine of Sarah Ruhl’s Becky Nurse of Salem—that history goes back centuries, to an ancestor of Becky’s who was among the defendants in the notorious “witch trials” of Salem, Mass. A lifelong resident of Salem herself, Becky works as a docent in the local museum dedicated to that history while dealing with plenty of challenges in her personal life: raising her teenage granddaughter, Gail (Lily Hilden), who has spent time in a psychiatric hospital; navigating a relationship with her married high-school sweetheart, Bob (David Hanson); dealing with an addiction to opioids; and oh yeah, maybe losing that aforementioned museum job.
That’s a lot for any person to bear, and for a little while, it feels as though Becky Nurse of Salem might buckle under the weight of so many targets of Becky’s (and, frankly, the playwright’s) ire. Morag Shepherd’s direction also sometimes points the audience in multiple directions at once, as supporting characters are frequently engaging in actions on the periphery of Becky’s existence—“witches” gyrating to mysterious forces, or someone writing on the ground as other characters enter and exit Becky’s presence. From the way Arthur Miller’s The Crucible misrepresented certain key facts of the witch panic history to the “lock her up” chants clearly echoing the 2016 presidential campaign to pharmaceutical companies, the play has a lot of anger to go around.
However, as the second act centers on Becky facing a possible trial of her own, Ruhl finds a metaphor that pulls the pieces together. Becky herself wonders if she is the victim of some sort of “curse” resulting from her family history, and in a manner of speaking, that proves to be true: It’s the curse faced by women throughout history who don’t conform to a particular standard. Sanderson does a great job capturing Becky’s contrary nature as a personal integrity that simultaneously makes her the sort of “nasty woman” that ends up on the receiving end of plenty of societal body blows. This woman gets her day in a Salem court with more of a chance for justice than her predecessor, but it’s a hard road to get there.
There’s not quite as much historical complexity in the search for truth undertaken by 15-year-old Sunny Hadley (CoCo May Berwald) in Elaine Jarvik’s world-premiere play Sunny in the Dark, but it’s a matter that’s just as crucial to her: She just wants to know her own origin story. While her mother (Alexandra Harbold) begins a campaign for school board opposing a conservative book-banner in a conservative community, Sunny renews her interest in knowing about her absent biological father, a story her mom has never explained. So she imagines potential father figures beyond that of her own stepfather (Paul Mulder), including the form of the physicist/author (Matthew Ivan Bennett) whose descriptions of the beginnings of the universe have begun to fascinate her.
Like Becky Nurse, Sunny in the Dark certainly has a bit of an edge in its voice regarding certain societal issues, most specifically those surrounding the school board campaign and the need for Sunny’s mother to present the appropriate “values.” Director Marion Markham navigates that territory with some playful direction that never allows the story to dip into didacticism, and manages to fold the nature of God and the universe into Sunny’s personal story in a way that centers the human need—as Sunny phrases it early on—to “make stuff up to make ourselves feel better.”
And it’s a truly lovely performance by Berwald at that center, conveying awkwardness, intelligence and curiosity in a perfect balance. Her steadying presence gives a face and voice to the “children” people talk about in the abstract when referring to “protecting the children,” in a way that robs them of their autonomy and need to understand their world. In a sense, Sunny in the Dark mostly becomes a tale about trying to make sense of the seeming randomness of creation in a way that centers individual connections and humanity rather than dogma. In the face of mystery, chaos and ignorance, it’s only love that makes it all worth living.
Becky Nurse of Salem
Pygmalion Productions
Rose Wagner Center Black Box
138 W. 300 South
Through Feb. 21
Sunny in the Dark
Salt Lake Acting Company
168 W. 500 North
Through March 1
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