Home Safety Assessment
By Cheryl Crane, Home Safety Assessment Team
As part of an ongoing commitment to help our members stay in their own homes as long as possible, Ashby Village’s Home Safety and Accessibility Assessment team recently sponsored a demonstration tour of a home. This gave participants a taste of a real assessment and an introduction to what is involved when evaluating their home's safety, accessibility and suitability to their current and future needs.
A sample checklist was used during the assessment, and the home assessment report resulting from the visits contains notes on problem locations, suggestions for actions to increase safety, and the level of expertise required to make improvements or modifications, such whether a homeowner, handyman or licensed contractor would do the work.
Discussions during the tour included the following areas which could pose difficulties or hazards for older residents:
- Driveway: Getting out of the car, up to the door and bringing in groceries. Some things which were pointed out were insufficient lighting, steps and the lack of a landing for putting down bags and finding keys.
- Kitchen: Lack of accessible electric plugs, storage of heavy items above comfortable reach and the need for glare-free task lighting.
- Bathroom: Lack of grab bars in the tub/shower, the toilet height, a hand-held shower nozzle and types of faucets and shower/tub controls that are both easy to use and functional.
- Stairways: Lack of or inadequate handrails and potential hazards associated with thick carpeting.
- Halls and large rooms: Potential hazards of scatter/area rugs causing tripping.
- Personal physical needs: Need to take into consideration an individual’s personal physical needs in planning safe physical spaces, such as the use of a walker.
Cheryl stressed the need to be proactive in eliminating physical hazards to reduce the risk of accidents, to improve usability or accessibility of basic functional areas, to improve fire safety and to encourage safety awareness and practice at home. Another demonstration tour is planned for the fall.