Our Stroke Recovery Support Services
A stroke can result in a wide range of challenges depending on the area and extent to which the brain is affected. Many clients depend on our long-term, non-medical specialized services we provide for a safe recovery.
We’re proud to provide vital stroke recovery support in Philadelphia.
Knowing how vital these services are, we strive to make exceptional home care accessible to everyone. We offer multiple payment options to ease the financial burden.
These options include:
- The Pennsylvania Caregiver Support Program
- The Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (a Medicaid state program)
- Veteran benefits
- Select private insurance plans
Adaptive Communication Facilitation
Strokes can damage areas of the brain that control language (aphasia), impacting speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. Our caregivers use communication strategies like adaptive communication facilitation to make it easier for the client to express themselves and understand others.
Key methods our caregivers use include:
- Simplifying language: Using short, simple sentences and clear, specific words, making it easier for another person to understand.
- Providing time and space: Giving clients time to respond without interrupting or rushing them.
- Using visual and written aids: Creating and using communication boards (with pictures or symbols), flashcards, or a small whiteboard/notepad.
- Offering positive reinforcement: Providing compliments and positive feedback to boost motivation.
- Assisting with technology: Helping the client use augmentative and alternative communication applications (AAC applications) like ipads or speech-generating devices.
Swallowing and Dysphagia Precautions
Strokes can affect swallowing by damaging parts of the brain that control complicated muscle coordination to safely move food and liquids from your mouth to the stomach – a condition called dysphagia.
This condition can lead to serious complications like choking, dehydration, malnutrition, and pneumonia from food and liquids going down the wrong tube instead of the esophagus.
Caregivers prevent these complications by:
- Modifying diets: Safely preparing foods as instructed by a doctor (pureeing solid food or thickening liquids) to make swallowing easier and safer.
- Focusing on one thing at a time: Concentrating on either eating or drinking and avoiding talking while the mouth is full.
- Ensuring the upright position: Moving clients into the fully upright (90-degree) position, with their head tilted slightly forward (the chin tuck) to reduce the risk of aspiration.
- Encourage swallowing maneuvers: Prompting clients to use certain techniques (taught by the speech-language therapist), such as the Mendelsohn maneuver (such as holding the swallow longer) or the effortful swallow (swallowing as hard as possible).
- Recognizing warning signs: Identifying warning signs to prevent aspiration like coughing, having a wet/gurgly voice, weight loss, and fatigue.
Cognitive Cueing and Memory Support
Strokes can injure brain areas necessary for memory, attention, problem-solving, and planning. Our specialized support helps improve the brain’s neuroplasticity.
The caregivers also teach compensatory strategies to manage the client’s ongoing deficits.
Some of these supportive activities include:
- Breaking down tasks: Simplifying complex activities (like making a salad or getting dressed) into a series of small, manageable steps.
- Ensuring environmental consistency: Confirming that frequently used items (keys, wallet, phone, etc.) are always kept in the same exact location.
- Routines and habits: Establishing and adhering to a consistent daily schedule for meals, hygiene, exercises, and medication, which helps establish reliable automatic habits.
- Minimizing distractions: Creating a quiet environment during focused tasks (turning off the tv while talking about therapy).
- Using external memory aids: Using external memory aids can help with remembering – such as using a large calendar or a whiteboard for appointments and using a notebook for important phone numbers.
Hemiparesis/Hemiplegia Safety and Support
An important part of stroke recovery support is providing caregivers who help with hemiparesis and hemiplegia. Hemiparesis and hemiplegia are terms used to describe the weakness or the paralysis affecting one side of the body, which is most often caused by stroke.
The conditions rob stroke survivors of their physical independence. Our caregivers help these stroke survivors relearn the skills they lost.
Some of the ways caregivers assist with hemiparesis and hemiplegia support includes:
- Positioning and range-of-motion: If the client has very little mobility, caregivers frequently reposition the client to prevent pressure sores (bed sores). They may also perform gentle, passive ROM exercises to improve joint flexibility and reduce muscle stiffness.
- Performing passive range-of-motion: Conducting gentle movements on weaker joints (elbows, wrists, and ankles) to prevent contractures and to reduce stiffness.
- Elevating edema: Regularly elevating the affected hand or foot, making sure the elevated hand or foot is higher than the heart. They also apply compression garments to minimize swelling (edema).
- Adaptive dressing: Assisting clients in getting dressed; starting with the weak limb first when dressing, and undressing the affected limb last.
- Unilateral hygiene support: Guiding and instructing the client to safely wash their weak side, ensuring they do not lean too heavily on it while standing, or securely supporting the weak arm while bathing.
Emotional and Behavioral Adaptation
Two other areas of the brain that can be severely impacted by a stroke are the: brain’s internal emotional control systems, and the client’s external reaction to sudden, catastrophic disability. These brain injuries can cause behavioral changes, emotional volatility and clinical depression.
To help stabilize the client’s emotion, caregivers can help with:
- Validating feelings: As a way to provide emotional support, caregivers acknowledge and validate a client’s feelings of grief, frustration, or sadness without trying to “fix” the client.
- Distinguishing a Pseudobulbar Affect (PBA) from mood: PBAs are neurological conditions which occur after a stroke or brain injury. They’re characterized by episodes of sudden, frequent, and uncontrollable crying or laughing and are not linked to the stroke survivor’s mood. Caregivers recognize PBA episodes and respond by remaining calm and gently redirecting.
- Encouraging socialization: Motivating clients to be social to combat isolation.
- Establishing predictable routines: Developing a consistent daily schedule to provide a sense of security and reduce anxiety.
- Practice active listening: Focusing on clients facial expressions and tone when communicating with them because sometimes the words the client is using might be wrong.
Who Benefits from Stroke Support Services?
Our stroke support services help many groups of people and the broader community. Those who benefit from our services include:
Stroke survivors: Our caregivers help stroke survivors address their long-term physical, cognitive, and emotional recovery needs.
Overworked family members: Family members often don’t have time to provide care for their loved ones and balance other responsibilities, such as children and a job. Our caregivers relieve family members of those duties.
Healthcare system efficiency: Our caregivers work hard to help survivors recover and to prevent them from being readmitted into the hospital. Their work provides long-term benefits to the healthcare system by relieving them from unnecessary re-admittance.
