Sometime, being part of the sandwich generation is a struggle. Just as your children are leaving home, and you think you’re going to get that second chance to travel and be selfish, your elderly parents need you.

I look around at my contemporaries, friends and neighbours and see so many battling.

A friend who is on 24 hour call for her infirm parents. She hasn’t been able to get away even for a weekend for years now. And she missed her daughter’s graduation. But, she knows her parents are not safe at home anymore. She knows the help she’s found is not ideal. However, she promised years ago never to move them into a care home. Even though she knows they would get better care. She is racked with her own guilt and misery.

The neighbour who has a demanding job in the City. His parents live a couple of hours away. They are showing advancing signs of dementia and are no longer able to look after themselves. He doesn’t even have the time to research the different options that maybe available to him. He is begrudgingly spending weekends with them trying to sort it out, much to the chagrin of his second wife.

The recently divorced lady, who has got her life back on track. She is financially sound again after retraining and starting to teach. Suddenly she is having to juggle her children, working full time and comforting her recently widowed father. She’d like him to move closer to her. But hasn’t got time to arrange the sale of the house or even to start sorting the old family house out.

The gentleman whose mother can’t look after herself anymore and needs to be moved into care, but needs to prepare her house for sale and sell it to pay for the care home fees

They are all struggling as part of the sandwich generation. These should be the fun years – enough money to enjoy themselves, children off living their lives and then, sometimes quite suddenly, your ever-independent parents need you.

There’s the anxiety and the guilt of not having enough time to support them properly. The decision whether to get in home help or move them into independent or assisted living or into care. It starts becoming all consuming and overwhelming. Balancing the emotional energy and physical time with full time work can become overwhelming.

This is when the advice and support of an independent third party is so valuable. Someone to talk these issues through who can suggest, recommend and then implement it on your behalf.

We’ve worked with many different clients. Helping them to give their parents the support they’d like to give them in an ideal world but just don’t have the time to.

If this sounds familiar, don’t battle on your own, ask for help.

If you would like a chat about how the Homemover Specialist could help you, contact us on 01483 255895 or by email. For more top tips and latest news make sure you follow our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages