Home care in Bethlehem, PA, on both sides of the Lehigh

Bethlehem sits in two counties at once. Most of the city is in Northampton County, and the western part is in Lehigh. For anyone arranging home care in Bethlehem, PA, that line decides which county office you call:

• Northampton County Area Agency on Aging, 2801 Emrick Boulevard in Bethlehem, (610) 829-4540
• Lehigh County Aging and Adult Services, 17 South Seventh Street in Allentown, (610) 782-3200

Care management, meal programs and LANtaVan ride sponsorship all follow the address. If you aren't sure which side of the line your parent's house is on, ask us. Our caregivers work across the whole city and both counties, so nobody has to settle the county question before getting help scheduled.

Our office is at 74 West Broad Street, open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Care is available around the clock, and you can call us at any hour.

Most Bethlehem families we hear from are calling within a day or two of a discharge from one of two hospitals: St. Luke's University Hospital on Ostrum Street in Fountain Hill, or, north of the river, Lehigh Valley Hospital-Muhlenberg on Schoenersville Road.

Recovery often runs through somewhere else first, such as Cedarbrook's Fountain Hill campus on Delaware Avenue. Rehab hands a family back a parent who is better, but not yet the person who left, and someone still has to be there at 7 a.m. for the first few weeks.

Depending on how the discharge went, that looks like hospital-to-home care, a few set hours a day of personal care, or live-in care when living alone again isn't realistic. Whichever it is, we match a caregiver who comes back on the same days, so your parent sees a familiar face.

The Lehigh River splits Bethlehem into two different kinds of caregiving. The South Side's streets climb toward South Mountain behind Lehigh University, with houses close together, steep front steps, and bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs. On the North Side, the old Moravian streets give way to flatter blocks where brick ranches put everything on one floor. Out in Bethlehem Township the lots get bigger and everything takes a car.

We try to match caregivers to the side of the river they already live on. On the South Side hills, mobility care starts at the front steps, not the front door.

Every August, Musikfest takes over both halves of the city for ten days, and from mid-November until just before Christmas, Christkindlmarkt draws crowds to the SteelStacks campus. For a parent at home, those weeks mean closed streets, no parking for blocks and a lot of noise, which is hard on someone with dementia who does better with a steady routine. We plan visits around them rather than pretending they aren't happening.

The rest of the year, the anchors are closer to home: the Rooney and Basilio Huertas senior centers on East Fourth Street on the South Side, and the Old York Road Senior Center on the North Side.

Getting a parent to one of them twice a week can do more good than another hour of housekeeping, and it is exactly what companion care is for. We serve 18015, 18017, 18018 and 18020 and the boroughs around them. See the full list of communities, read about home care across the Lehigh Valley, or call us to set up a free in-home assessment.

Between the big festivals, most of life in Bethlehem is ordinary weekdays, and that is where a caregiver does the most good. A morning visit might start with help in the shower and getting dressed, then breakfast and a look at the calendar so your loved one knows what the day holds.

Midweek might bring a ride to the main branch of the Bethlehem Area Public Library on West Church Street, where your dad returns his books and chooses new ones before a stop for groceries. After time in the hospital, trips like these give the week a shape again while his strength comes back.

In home care in Bethlehem works best when it makes time for the people your parent misses. Caregivers make time to talk, help with video calls to grandchildren across the country and keep up with the friends he knows from church. Our Lehigh Valley office, here in the city, keeps the family posted after visits, which matters most to the relatives who live far away.