Celebrating Love and Care this Valentine's Day

Think back to your childhood, and it’s likely that your first ‘Valentine’ was your mother or father, when you returned from school with a badly drawn card and a little rhyme expressing your love for the people who’d cared for you since birth. Today you might be at the age where it is you who needs to care for them.

All around the country there are families who dedicate considerable amounts of time to looking after their ageing parents, ensuring that they can remain in their home, among their friends and families, and playing a part in community life for as long as possible. As Valentine’s Day approaches, we at Home Instead think this love and care should be celebrated too.

While like all relationships the parent-adult child one can experience its ups and downs over the years, the bonds we form with our parents almost always remain for life. We see this every day, when we work with older people and their loved ones. It is often the adult child who can tell our CAREGivers of the most minute – but crucial – detail needed in their parent’s care plan, which makes all the difference in enhancing their quality of life.

By telling our CAREGivers everything from which sections of the paper they like to read, to how many sugars – if any – they like in their tea, to which household items their loved one can no longer safely use, adult children ensure that Home Instead Senior Care can live up to its promise to provide the highest quality in home care for its clients.

Few businesses outside our sector get to witness this unique, loving, caring bond that has survived for years, and will last a lifetime, and we wanted to take the opportunity this Valentine’s Day to recognise the amazing contribution that adult children make, both to the lives of their ageing parents, and to those of us who work with them.