Tips (please!) on how to prevent a dementia person living at home from wandering away.

Hiding his shoes will not help. Me, I have round knobs in my house and got the baby covers. They go around and around when the dementia person tries to use them. Only you will know what to do to get the handle to turn. My cousin put in key dead bolts. Only thing is they are a fire hazard and my Uncle was never left alone. When he passed, cousin took them out.

People with Dementia think they can do, and seem to be able to do it. Mom could not dress herself, but she seemed to be able to do it at 3am in the morning. She also was not suppose to do stairs but got up the ones from her room to my kitchen very quietly.

Put locks on the doors that only open with a key. Or digital ones that use a numeric code.

Basically take the same precautions with your father at home that you would take with a toddler.

Locked windows and doors that he cannot open or you will have to watch him 24/7.

Start small. Put a latch on the outside of his bedroom door and have grates put on his bedroom windows. This way he can't get up at night and wander.

I was an in-home caregiver for 25 years mostly to elderly people with some form of dementia or another. I can't tell you how many families were at their wit's end because they didn't know what to do when they had a LO with dementia who wanders off.

I'd ask them how they kept their kids from wandering off when they were toddlers. Basically do the same thing. Baby-proofing a home and dementia-proofing one are pretty much the same thing.

Or you could start looking at memory care facilities.

My step-mother is in MC, she was a roamer and dumpster diver, she could no longer live in AL, needed lockdown.

Safety is the first concern he is already getting out, and all the fancy devices will not stop him and you cannot barricade him inside the home either,

Might be time for MC you cannot play patrol girl for the rest of his life, my mother is 98 could be a verrry long time.

Since no one else called this out, I will. In your second sentence you state that your dad lives with you and your husband and that between the 2 of you "someone is always with him."
Well obviously no one was with him that afternoon he wandered off or he wouldn't have made it a mile and a half down the road now would he?
This is very dangerous especially with the colder weather coming on you guys sooner than later, and is nothing to be taken lightly.
You've already gotten some suggestions to try and keep your dad in the house, but know that all too often wandering and incontinence are the final 2 straws that will cause a family to have to place their loved one, because their safety becomes of utmost importance.
Wishing you wisdom and discernment in this difficult situation.

My LO wears a smartwatch that I track on my smartphone. I also track his air tag, which is on his key chain. Ditto his smartphone. The app that tracks him is called Find My. It’s for Apple devices. It shows where he is on a map.

We both also have Hard Fall detection on our phones. It will notify 911 when it detects a fall.

But wait - the time is a bit delayed. I’m not seeing it in real time, but I’d know LO’s trail and could find him if something seemed amiss. And so what? Something bad could happen anyway, before I know. The devices provide peace of mind as to where they are but don’t prevent dangerous situations.

I would not count on technology to protect. It doesn’t have that capability. Yet I’m grateful for what it does do.

The key is not to let him get out of the house in the first place, not to go looking for him with a tracker once he's wandered off! This is dangerous territory his dementia is taking him into now, no joke.

Install a slide lock UP HIGH (out of dad's reach) on the doors in the house that lead to outside. And make sure they stay locked 24/7. Also place a round black rug in front of the doors you don't want him to use. Many dementia patients have spatial difficulties and think the rug is a black hole, so they steer clear of it.

Or get dad placed in a Memory Care Assisted Living facility that doesn't use bracelets or the like.....but has an escape proof locked door system for the residents. My mom's memory care AL had no elopement in the 3 years she lived there. Such was the excellent set up they had in place where the locked exterior doors were camouflaged with murals, so residents didn't even realize what they were.

Taking dad out of his home environment likely disoriented him quite a bit, which is common. Keep a regular routine with him as much as possible. Call the doctor if his Sundowning causes a lot of agitation as it did for my mother. Ativan calmed her down w/o knocking her out.

Best of luck to you.

This may seem very heartless, but it’s still true. One of the reasons why elders did not live so long in the old days was just this sort of behavior. They wandered, froze to death, died of thirst, walked over a cliff in the quarry, fell into water and drowned, fell into the fire, injured themselves and didn’t recover etc etc etc. 'S/He was never the same after that', even if it wasn't fatal. It was common – fewer medical options were not the only reason for earlier deaths.

Unfortunately it may be a choice – more freedom and more risks at home, or a care facility.

I saw this story on TV last year of how this man solved his dad’s problem of wandering. He placed GPS trackers in his father’s shoes and this is how he tracks his father whenever he wanders.

That being said, it is not safe for your father to wander as we all know of the dangers involved with this. It’s time for you to consider MC where your father will be safe and it will put your mind at ease to know that he’s safe.

Sounds like your Dad may have been Sundowning.

https://www.agingcare.com/topics/19/sundowners-syndrome

You live in IL so you'll need to have a fool-proof method to prevent him from getting outside before the winter sets in for realsies. I live in MN and every single year someone's elderly LO is tragically found frozen in a field somewhere.

Some on this forum have experience using CBD, but I'm not a proponent of this or other supplements for reasons I won't go into here. Locking him inside is not recommended. Door alarms may be the best option if you're always nearby. I wouldn't bother with anything wearable if he can take it off. Hopefully he doesn't still drive.

Many local police detachments will register homes where someone with dementia lives and some even provide trackers, be sure to check into that.

https://www.agingcare.com/articles/wandering-alzheimers-patients-142875.htm

https://www.agingcare.com/articles/help-a-senior-with-dementia-who-wanders-167541.htm

I’ve mentioned a couple of times here that I had an aunt with Alzheimer’s who was quite the impressive, albeit scary, wanderer. The family installed an array of locks and alarms and she managed to bypass all of it over and over again. She was found one time in the wee hours of the night distributing the contents of her jewelry box throughout the neighborhood including in some ditches. Nothing helped until she moved to memory care. I’m sorry you’re in this position. It’s never a bad idea to address your concerns with the doctor. I wish you peace in finding the best path forward

I will be following your query to see what is out there now in our new and wonderful world of high tech. I know of the luggage tags trackers, the phone trackers, but don't know of anything that is not removable EXCEPT that, in some areas seniors can wear (voluntarily) a tracker; my brother's ex suffered from alcoholic encephalopathy and he was know to leave his ALF and go to purchase alcohol. He wore a wrist or ankle band for some time and if I remember correctly (this was half a decade and more ago) this was a sort of program run through police department in Palm Spring where they lived.

I have never heard of such a thing before other than for felons released on house arrest. So I am curious myself what is out there that would not be removable. My own friend's brother went from San Francisco to Oakland on public transit despite his severe dementia and was gone for several days. Was absolutely terrifying for the entire family. Sure hope you find something.

Often dementia patients do not adjust well to a change in routine, and your dad may have experienced a decline in cognition as a result of that.

Hiding his shoes won't make any difference if he has reached this point. He may not recall that he needs to wear shoes to go for a walk. Or he'll recall today but not next week.

People will post about how to keep your LO from wandering, but IMO the suggestions aren't too helpful. The reason is that the person with dementia isn't thinking the way a normal person thinks. For instance, someone will say that you should put a dark rug in front of the door and the patient will perceive it as a barrier and won't cross it. Yeah, maybe in some people who still know what a barrier is. My mother perceived an animal in a large flower arrangement in her room, and it scared her. No one else could see the animal. There wasn't an animal. We were unprepared for her to see an animal! Since you never know what they are actually seeing at any given moment, it makes no sense to hope that something that looks to us like a barrier or a hole in the floor is going to stop anyone. The might see it as a dark rug, a train track or a dead horse. Who knows!?

I don't know of natural supplements that ease anxiety in a dementia patient. Maybe in a normal patient, but again, dementia brains aren't normal. They have a serious brain (defect? anomaly? illness? terminology doesn't matter). Their brains are shrinking, the cells don't come back, amyloid plaque is forming, and it's time for serious meds. Forget supplements and ask dad's doctor for proven anxiety-reducing drugs that work for dementia patients.

I'm very sorry for your dad's issues. Generally when the wandering starts, it's time to place them in 24/7 care where professionals who know what they're doing can care for them.