Where to begin when asking for help

Help can mean different things to different people. To some, it can be a means to improve the quality of their loved one’s life situation. To others, it is giving a person the tools they need to be more independent.

Help can be as simple as visiting someone on a regular basis and maybe making some occasional phone calls. Help can also be as comprehensive as doing all a person’s Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) or Instrumental Activities for Daily Living (IADLs) for them, because they simply can’t do them for themselves.

Before going about asking for assistance, it would be a good idea to clearly define the kind of help, and for whom it’s being asked. For example, a young child needs a very different kind of help than an adult who is able to find and keep a job on their own. Here are some questions to get the answers to about the person with the disability before tackling anything else:

1. What is the individual’s age? Are they a child, an adolescent, a student, an adult, an adult who works outside the home, a senior?
2. What type of disability is being discussed? Are we dealing with physical, mental, developmental issues, all the above?
3. Are there multiple factors involved? If so, they must be prioritized, especially if services are not immediately available.
4. What is the extent and severity of the disability? This, more than anything else, determines what kind of help can be provided.
5. What is the extent of the help? Occasional? Weekly? Daily? All the time? Does one person need to visit the individual, or would a day program at an away-from-home location work?
6. Is the help meant to be temporary or more permanent? Is the individual working toward self-sufficiency, some level of independence, or is there a need for someone to always perform the service(s) for that person?

Where to find the help you need

Finding all of the help needed in one spot may seem too good to be true. But that’s not necessarily the case. There are agencies out there that want to do everything they can to help you. Consider RISE Services (riseservices.org). RISE can help you with all of the above while also assisting with financial considerations, i.e., who/what organization is paying for the help (Medicaid? Medicare? Private insurance? Some other entity?), how much (The full amount? A percentage of the bill? Some other arrangement?), how often (Monthly? Per service usage? Weekly? Some other timeframe?).

Asking for help, no matter what kind, is never easy. Nor does it necessarily get easier with practice. You may even need help to find answers to some of the questions above. That’s when the value of an agency like RISE Services, that specializes in matching those who need help with assistance that’s available, is priceless. They can provide answers to questions that haven’t even been thought of yet. They can set up the outwardly needed help, for example, a specialized direct services person to do medication management, and more subtle help, like some form of psychotherapy or PT/OT.

Check out RISE’s website for the nearest location and phone number, then contact us at https://riseservicesinc.org/contact/.