Home care in Lakewood, NJ, from River Avenue to Leisure Village

Ask a family where their search for home care in Lakewood, NJ began, and the answer is often an address: 600 River Avenue, where someone told them a parent was going home in two days.

That address is Monmouth Medical Center Southern Campus, the RWJBarnabas Health hospital on Route 9 that many people still know as Kimball Medical Center. Often the next stop is a short rehab stay on the same road:

• Atlantic Coast Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center, 485 River Avenue
• FountainView Care Center, 527 River Avenue
• Leisure Chateau Rehabilitation, 962 River Avenue
• Concord Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center, a few minutes east at 963 Ocean Avenue

Discharge from rehab is abrupt. Therapy that happened five days a week stops, and someone who was watched around the clock is suddenly alone between family visits. Hospital-to-home care covers those first days. A caregiver is there when the equipment arrives, keeps to the medication schedule the rehab set, and stays overnight so a 3 a.m. trip to the bathroom doesn't undo weeks of recovery.

Lakewood's 55-and-over communities sit mostly toward Route 70, on the township's south side, and the house your parent lives in changes what a caregiver does all day.

Leisure Village is mostly attached one-floor homes around two clubhouses, Dorchester Hall and Buckingham Hall. An older bathroom there often has a step-over tub and a doorway a walker barely clears, with no room for a second person to stand alongside during a transfer. In these homes the safety problem is usually a few square feet of tile.

The Fairways at Lake Ridge is newer, with single-family homes and attached courtyard homes around its own clubhouse. Doorways are wider, but some homes have a second floor, a loft or a basement, and that brings the stairs back into the plan.

What that means for care

Tell us which kind of house it is when you call. In a Leisure Village home the help usually centers on bathing and dressing, which is personal care. In a house with stairs, the day gets arranged so the stairs are used twice instead of nine times, which is mobility care. We settle it together at the free in-home visit.

Lakewood is a young town full of children, not a retirement town. If your mother lives in your house, with grandchildren running up and down the stairs, home care is rarely someone sitting with her all day.

It is a specific block of hours that closes a specific gap: weekday mornings when everyone is at work and school, the two nights a week nobody can stay awake for, or the stretch after a hospital stay when the usual arrangement isn't enough.

A few things are worth saying on the first call, because they shape the schedule and the caregiver we send:

• Whether the kitchen is kosher, and how it is kept
• Whether the household keeps Shabbos, and what that means for Friday afternoon and Saturday
• Which language your parent is most comfortable hearing
• Which hours truly need covering, not which ones look neat on a calendar

Short, well-placed shifts are often the right answer here, with the same caregiver coming back so your parent and the children get to know them. See hourly care and overnight care. Lakewood Community Services Corporation, (732) 886-6964, delivers kosher meals to Lakewood and Toms River seniors on weekdays.

When driving stops, the county's answer is Ocean Ride's Reserve-A-Ride, door-to-door rides for residents 60 and older and adults with disabilities, mostly to doctors, shops and errands inside Ocean County. Book at (732) 736-8989, up to four weeks ahead. A round trip is $6, or $3 with a PAAD card.

Two rules catch families out. Drivers aren't allowed to come into the home, so your parent has to be at ground level, dressed and ready, when the van pulls up. And the van can come as much as an hour and a half before the appointment time.

Together that makes a two-hour job that has nothing to do with the doctor: getting someone bathed and dressed, down the front step, and waiting with them until the van comes. A caregiver can take that job off your hands as part of companion care.

Who to call next

For benefits screening and caregiver support, the Ocean County Office of Senior Services is in the Ocean County Resource Center at 1005 Hooper Avenue in Toms River, (732) 929-2091. Our Ocean County office is down the road at 1400 Hooper Avenue, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and someone is reachable around the clock. See our payment options, every Ocean County town we cover, or read about home care across Ocean County.