Wild Card: Homeless Elders

A topic that does not crosss our minds often in regards to the elderly is homelessness. Unfortunately, elders are increasing at an alarming number with being homeless. Many elders are at risk of being homeless that many have been diagnosed with many ailments such as hypertension, circulatory complications, diabetes, and cardiac disease. Due to the fact that they are homeless numerous elders are not worrying about their health but instead finding a safe place to sleep every night.

Homeless elders who do not have much social support from family and friends are more prone to dementia, and other illnesses that are mental. A demented elder may have memory problems, bad judgement, cognitive impairment, and poor comprehension. Also depression can make it complicative for follow-ups that are important for secoure housing. Both of these conditions may threaten an eldery person's housing situation that may be stable, i.e. non-payment due to memory loss or create an unsafe environment in a home like leaving the stove on, which leads to an elder losing his or her home.

Homeless elders encounter the same barriers as young: lack of awareness of resources, lack of transportation, and to obtain services go through long application processes. For an elder overcoming these concerns are more difficut since they are experiencing chronic medical condtions, have poor health, poor mobility, and limitations that are linked to aging. These issues are considered external barriers since they are physical while internal barriers are what a person's believes in based on their environment.

Fortunately, there are services that provide care for the homeless, intensive care management, which is essential for stable housing. While living in a better living situation, health services will be seeked as well as behavior services. Once an elder is stable, check ups will be continued by a case management provider that icludes social and case manages to guarantee that the elderly individual is able to take care of themselves.

I thought this article was a great to blog about since lots of people faile to recognize that there are just as many old people as young people who are probably worse off since their health may be declining. Hopefully as a society, we can all improve our communities by encouraging the homeless to get back on track by taking better care of themselves, seeking the help the need by a services that provide it whether it is housing as well as health services. Basically this support would eliminate barriers in hopes of accomplishing improved health and housing stability amongst the homeless especially with the elderly.