Learning How to Cook with Help from Habilitation Services
If your family member is developmentally disabled, you may have worried that she would never learn simple skills, like cooking even a basic meal for herself. With the help of habilitation services, your family member can learn these skills and many more. What she may need to do is to practice these skills over and over again until she’s got them mastered.
Deciding What Foods or Meals to Prepare
Understanding what foods are healthy choices and determining what meals or recipes your family member wants to make can be quite a process. She might want to learn to make basic foods, like canned soup or grilled cheese sandwiches. More complicated dishes are possible, too. Learning to make these decisions is important.
Planning a Shopping Trip
Once your family member knows what she’s going to cook, she needs to put together a shopping list and plan a trip. This might involve checking the fridge and pantry for necessary ingredients that are already on hand, making sure those foods are still good to use, and keeping track of what’s still needed.
Getting the Necessary Ingredients
Planning the trip is just the beginning. Shopping can be intimidating because grocery stores are full of lots of different stimuli that can make decisions difficult. Habilitation helps your family member to learn how to use a shopping list and where to go in the store to get the necessary food items.
Putting Foods Away
Once the shopping trip is over, the foods need to be stored properly in order to be ready to use later. Learning which foods can go in the pantry and which need cold storage might be something that has been difficult for your family member in the past. Matching those ingredients with the proper storage now means also being able to find them later.
Finally Cooking the Meal and Eating
Now that everything is home from the store, the next step is learning how to put those ingredients together into the meal that your family member wants to be able to make. Afterward, there’s enjoying the fruits of all that labor and cleaning up.
There’s a lot that goes into cooking even a simple meal and those skills are ones that your developmentally disabled family member can learn with time and practice. Residential habilitation services offer the patience and the experience that your family member needs in order to master these new skills.
If you are considering residential habilitation in Carmel, IN, please call the caring staff at RSI Cares. Serving Greater Indianapolis Area. Call for Immediate Info & Assistance: 317-471-0750.
As a practicing Registered Nurse, Etelka was keenly aware of a void in quality patient care that could be provided in the home. She embarked upon a journey to develop a home health care agency that would exceed all expectations and become a trusted partner to physicians and patients.
A Distinguished Career From Nurse to Director of Nursing to President of Home Services Unlimited
Etelka’s distinguished career followed a logical progression to her position as President of Home Services Unlimited. She graduated as a nurse practitioner with a Bachelor of Nursing (RN) in 1972 from Meshgorya University in the Ukraine, close to where she lived with her family. She married her husband Phil in 1973 and decided in 1977 that they would relocate to the United States to be closer to family and to come to this land of opportunity. With an eagerness to continue her budding career, Etelka sat for and passed her Boards in the U.S. in 1979.
A Love and Talent for Working with the Elderly
Etelka began her nursing career in the U.S. at Colonial Crest, now part of Golden Living, where shewasthe In-service Coordinator, the Director of Training and Education and Director of Nursing, a position she occupied for several years.
With a group of partners, she co-founded Adept Corporation, which operated group homes for the mentally challenged. The business was successful and in 1996, Etelka sold her share to return to her roots, caring for the elderly.
In January of 1997, Etelka opened Home Services Unlimited as a fully licensed business to provide home health care. In her quest to learn to do better for her patients, she had already obtained a Masters in Healthcare Administration (MHA) in May of 1990 from the College of St. Francis. As President of Home Services Unlimited, Inc., Etelka guides the trusted, experienced care model Home Services Unlimited uses to continue providing excellent home health care.
Giving Back to the Community of Indianapolis
Volunteering for community services is a high priority for Etelka. Her memberships include the Indiana Association of Rehabilitation Facilities, Executive Women in Health Care and the Indiana Association for Home and Hospice Care, where she is a member of the Board of Directors.
Etelka has also served on the Board of Directors with Hooverwood Home, a highly regarded geriatric facility, since 1997 and as the President for 2005-2006. Through her community work, she has received several awards and accolades, including the Nora McFarland award in 2002, from the Indiana Association of Home and Hospice Care.
Etelka was honored as a “Health Care Hero” by the Indianapolis Business Journal. The issue can be read online here:
http://mags.ibj.com/activemagazine/welcome/html/ibjhch.html.
After clicking on the link, then click on the image of the issue’s front page. After that, you can browse through the issue or click in a box near the top of your internet browser to adjust the page to 17, which is where Etelka’s article appears.
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