I am listed as my Mom's agent with DPOA over health and finances. Does that mean I can force her to have in home care?

Not really. You would need two psychiatric MD's to certify her as incompetent, not just her primary. We started taking mom on tours of assisted living at this point. One convinced her to do a one month "vacation" there. She liked it and stayed. Months later when she said she was moving back home, we sought Guardianship. The judge agreed she should stay in assisted living.

My Mom also refused any type of in-home care, and even when I found an excellent Agency of experienced Caregivers, Mom shooed them all out. Even the most experienced Caregiver couldn't convince her she needed help.

Even to this day I can still hear Mom in the background saying "If I need your help, I will call you", when the Caregiver called me saying that Mom wants her out of the house. Mom also wouldn't use a walker, and didn't like using her cane, she felt it made her look old. Sadly two weeks later Mom fell and never returned back to that house, she passed 3 months later.

My Dad is now in Independent Living, happy as a clam with his new apartment as he doesn't want what happened to my Mom to happen to him. He accepted his age decline.

Our parent(s) can become very stubborn, dementia or not. They don't want to give up their freedom, nor do the women want another woman doing the cooking in THEIR kitchen or cleaning THEIR house.

My mom fell around Thanksgiving of 2014 and broke her hip. She lived alone but depended on me to entertain her and take her shopping daily from around 12 - 3. After her hip surgery, the doctors told me she should not live alone and that I should look into assisted living/memory care. She was in the moderate stage of dementia then, and still is. I have DPOA over everything and am an only child. I took it upon myself to put someone in the house - a 24/7 caregiver, and she balked and complained. Then we switched caregivers and it started up again - the tantrums, the "leave me alone get out of my house" the whole nine yards. But I won't budge. She can't dial the telephone, she doesn't know her sisters are dead, she tries to brush her teeth with hand lotion and she puts clothing on backwards over her nightgown. I can't see where anybody would get involved in our situation to "take me to court" because I insist she has in-home care. so I just did it.

Also, because we think mom's vascular dementia is going into Alzheimer's, we now have "mood meds" to help stabilize her anxious feelings of having "a stranger" in the house. They are at the beginning stages of going garage saling together, out for coffee, and I believe mom views her as more of a room mate now. Even though mom DOES NOT like this arrangement, I tell her sorry it is for your safety, and after she gets her meds she becomes more pleasant.

We are just starting this nightmare journey ourselves, but according to the eldercare attorney, the answer is NO. Everyone agrees that my Mom needs help, except for her! She is coming home Monday after being in the hospital & rehab since Aug. 26. She actually needed help two years ago, but has deteroriated to not even standing on her on now, but we told her we would leave her in the nursing home unless she paid for 24/7 professional care. She agreed, but I'm pretty sure she will fire them first chance she gets. We warned her we would seek guardianship (vascular & LBD plus her mobility issues) and she would loose all her rights. We tried being sweet, reasoning, begging, pleading and now we're down to threats. I hope to God I just go to bed one night and don't wake up (when I get old) because I sure don't want to put my kids through the same thing!

You can not force her it is best to let her understand why and how it is important for her to be safe as long as she is going to stay home.

The thing I realized is I can't reason with her. She doesn't understand WHY she can't live alone. She won't accept it. She doesn't have the ability to see the situation for the reality it is. So.... knowing she eats the dog treats and does things nobody would do if their brain was functioning correctly, I did make the decision for her. I go through the conversation again, and again, and again... saying, "It's this or you go to live away from home without your puppy... you will be in a nursing home. You cannot live alone, and this is how it is if you want to stay home." We go through it every other day but she sulks and then forgets, and is "ok" for a little while until she gets mad again. It is the lesser of two evils. Now, if you can "force" her to live with someone at home legally, I guess not. So I guess i'm breaking the law to keep my mom home. oh well. I don't have anyone that is going to challenge me. She is 92 and has fallen 2x in the past year. this is as good as it gets and anyone on the outside looking in would consider her lucky to get to live in her beautiful little house with her dog and still have her familiar surroundings.

Legal points aside, I think you do as much as you can get away with with some bambozzleing, distraction, diversion, whatever works. Sometimes experienced home care folks can finess around elders bad reasoning and objections. I'm working on my folks currently. They've had some meet and greets with the caregivers and liked them. I'm doing it as "Just in case" scenerio but just in case is going to be pretty soon. But in the end, if the folks flat out refuse help, not much I can do till a major crisis hits.