Direction Home Akron Canton is offering alternative care programs besides nursing homes.

For senior citizens or individuals with limited living standards stuck with compromising to institutionalized care settings like retirement homes, there’s another alternative for assisted care that can save your money and living space.

Privately owned, non profit, Direction Home Akron Canton is a sub sector of Area Agency on Aging & Disabilities that seeks to help the elderly and disabled, by providing guidance on the various care programs that provide for home and community living.

The inception of the Area Agency came from the Older American Act that sought older persons not acceptable into other public and private systems of care.

COO/CFO of Direction Home, Charles Alderson, explains the different sectors serve different counties in Ohio through districts.

“It (Older American Act) created state federal programs and within the state of Ohio, they broke the state down into 13 districts, so were actually district 10B that is comprised of Summit, Portage, Stark and Wayne counties in which we supply for the aging and disabled populations in the district.”

Area Agency has 200 providers with funding being from government healthcare agencies to give local, for profit organizations more attention to customers, as Senior Vice President, Matthew Reed describes.

“Most of our 200 providers are for profit organizations that have little to no barrier to entry to market for home health. We push the initiative for any provider that fits the criteria can enter in the state market.”

Direction home provide several different long-term care programs that can assist through transportation in and out of home, food deliveries, and house safety adjustments.

“We work with Meals on Wheels in providing meal services and how often our customers need it. We also work for transportation companies for doctor visits and home care/homemaker services for ramp and handlebar modifications.” These are but a few services Alderson listed off that direction home organizes.

The goal of Area Agency and Direction Home is to offer the elderly and disabled the ability to live independently in a place they feel is home as opposed to nursing homes. Carla Bayonnet, team leader on Direction Home’s resource center describe the reception she received from customers

“We always hear back from customers saying “Your services allowed me to stay in my home independently”. That’s a good outcome if someone need a little help bathing, dressing, and eating, just enough to keep their head above water and stay where they want to be.”

Over the years, Ohio has been transitioning many different medicaid services as the management behind these programs are no longer attended. Making these medicaid services less discoverable for individuals looking for care services.

Alderson plans the next step for the company to work on making this services so the government can support these services besides having the services support themselves.

We want to look at all home and community based services and push those to be eligible for medicare programs that will allow us to manage and provide the most benefit to its user.”

For more information on the Direction Home or Area Agency on Aging and Disabilities you can go to www.dhad.org.

My latest story is here: https://t.co/JR4mBZMRJz Learn about the different services that are provided for the elderly and disabled through Direction Home Akron Canton #JMCRPP

— Julian Wissinger (@JulianWissinger) December 5, 2017

If you're elderly, there's another assertive care besides nursing home. read here for more: https://t.co/JR4mBZMRJz #JMCRPP

— Julian Wissinger (@JulianWissinger) December 5, 2017