There's No Place Like (a Nursing) Home: 4 Powerful Steps That Will Change Your Life (Paperback)

by Karen Shoff (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Baby boomers are...watching their parents' estates being consumed by enormous care-giving expenses. People ages 40-65 should act now. -- Shirley Friedman, Newark Star-Ledger, Jan 9, 2003

Sound vital advice that will help people...receive the care they need from caregivers that they can trust -- Sandra Pierce-Miller, Director, California Partnership of Long-Term Care, State of California

The quintessential primer on long-term care...authoritative ... balanced...about self-determination and empowerment. Autonomy in your senior years? Now it's possible. -- Hannah Nelson, Chief of Staff, Jacobi Medical Center, New York

This exciting book could save your life...easy to read, optimistic and sensible...full of loving caring, life-affirming help. -- Lenore Weitzman, Author

This is a very helpful and ultimately optimistic book that makes it easier to deal with a difficult subject. -- Fred Brock, New York Times, August 10, 2003

Product Description
With proper planning you can continue to live in dignity, without going into a nursing home. This book describes the steps necessary to do that:

1. Long Term Care Insurance

2. Geriatric Care Management

3. Putting Your Plans In Writing (including a living will, written instructions on the care you want and how it will be paid for), and

4. Getting Allies (including your doctor, your lawyer, your CPA, your family and friends).

The book describes how people are inadvertently put in nursing homes, how Mrs. Shoff kept her 96 year old father at her home after he had a major stroke, and all of the details of planning for your future comfort and dignity.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 170 pages
• Publisher: Invisible Ink (October 31, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971684707
• ISBN-13: 978-0971684706
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #628,148 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book will change your life, May 21, 2003

By	etf s (Waterbury CT USA) - See all my reviews

Where will you spend your old age? Will you live in a nursing home? Will they take you for walks when you want to go out? Will they help you reposition yourself in bed every couple of hours to help you avoid getting bedsores? Will they be able to get to you on time when you need assistance using the facilities? Will you miss you home?

What if you could stay in the comfort of your own home, with round the clock care if need be, with your choice of caregivers? What if this option was not only for the fabulously wealthy, but was in fact available to anyone and everyone at a fraction of the price of a nursing home? It is not as farfetched as it seems. It just takes some careful planning.

Our society has acknowledged that surviving old age takes preparation. Retirement funds, social security, and well-stocked shelves of volumes upon volumes of do-it-yourself guides are evidence of these sentiments. It is a wonder that amidst all the excitement, most people fail to prepare for illness and incapacitation.

But Karen Shoff of Santa Monica California has vowed to make this ignorance a thing of the past. In her compelling and essential new book, There's No Place Like A Nursing Home, she details in a surprisingly fascinating manner the problems inherent in institutional life, and offers a step-by-step solution. The fast paced text is only enhance by the stories she masterfully tells. As a former Social Worker and Gerontologist, she was witness to the horrors of institutional life. Her experiences in institutional life fueled her passionate commitment to protecting her family, friends and clients from those very facilities.

Her goal is to help ensure each and every American a life of dignity, security, and comfort. She details steps that if taken, will free one from worry, and doubt. She tells her reader how he can stay in the comfort and dignity of his own home, while at the same time receiving care far superior to that offered in any institution for significantly less. Her solution is a combination of Long Term Care Insurance, careful planning, and a slew of incisive, original suggestions. As one of the foremost experts in her field, her book is invaluable. Our society owes Karen Shoff a debt of gratitude for opening up her vast expertise and experience for our benefit.

Don't wait any longer. There's No Place Like A Nursing Home will change your life.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There's No Place Like (a Nursing) Home, January 4, 2003

By	Lenore F. Broughton (Burlington, Vermont United States) - See all my reviews

Mrs. Shoff has written a clear, convincing, heart-felt, elegantly organized treatise on how to age responsibly. It has rearranged and brightened up a very confused and bleak picture of what it means to age, derived from countless visits to nursing homes over the years. Instead of a sense of victimhood, I have caught a (liberating) glimpse of what it might mean - for me and my dear friends - to have a hand in determining our own destinies!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Practical advice about planning for our futures, December 8, 2002

By	Judy Gruen "noodler60" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a great book for anyone who is practical enough to realize that we need to plan in advance for our later years, when the chances of being incapacitated or somehow needing in-home assistance are greater than ever before.
Author Karen Shoff has parlayed her many years of experience as both a geriatric social worker and expert in long-term care insurance to help us understand the implications (financial, emotional, and other) of getting a good long-term health insurance plans. She includes many compelling examples about what has happened to people who didn't have this long-term care insurance, versus the much happier outcomes of those who did: longer, happier lives, spent in their own homes, and far more of their own money left at the end of their lives to pass on to their families. Her own father, in his 90s, had to spend nearly all his assets to pay for care in his (and later, Karen's home) to avoid the indignities and lesser quality care of most nursing homes.

A great book to get for your middle-aged parents or even for yourself!