Aging Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

How Do Geriatric Care Managers Give Quality of Life and Joy to LGBT Clients?

June 14, 2019

As June is LGTBQ Pride Month, let us celebrate it by being aware that Senior LGTBQ Elders are bullied, isolated, lonely just like LGTBQ younger people.

A recent report found that LGBT elders tend to have more medical problems, higher poverty levels social isolation than straight elders. Same-sex partners are not allowed many of the resources afforded to spouses and biological family members during the aging process. LGBT elders tend to lack support from many mainstream aging programs such as senior centers and places of worship or they are afraid of the stigma and discrimination that could result from joining those programs.

Mainstream retirement communities often deny LGBT elder couples the right to live in them. They often continue to live on their own, even if they need access to the services offered by those communities. These elders may fear discrimination and being ostracized by housing staff and often stay in the closet to obtain housing. Because large numbers of gay elders choose to live alone, they have fewer opportunities for social interaction than their heterosexual peers.

As a result, many LGBT elders live in the community and can really benefit from the quality of life activities that geriatric care managers can bring into the home through a personal assistance service and reminiscence therapy

One LGBT program in California created social connections by arranging dinner parties, shopping trips, and grocery shopping.

Finding activities that help elders grow and nurture their emotional, intellectual, physical, and/or spiritual quality of life can help to nurture an older person’s whole life and bring back joy.

Escorting LGTBQ Elders to movies about gay elders or renting them through Netflix and watching with them is a great activity. There are terrific, even academy award winning film like Beginners, you can watch together and talk about, as activities.

But what about the quality of life for LGBT aging clients. This recent article in the New York Times shows how one retirement community responding and found joy for LGBT clients, where many LGTB aging clients have to fight for acceptance.

If aging life or geriatric care manager want to find resources for LGBT aging clients or more about their issues, The Journal of Aging Life Care has an article with many resources to help you serve these vulnerable clients in finding Joy and acceptance.

The Journal Of Aging Life has a resources list for a research tool for aging LGBT clients edited by Jennifer Crittenden

The Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4^th edition has a seminal chapter written by geriatric care manager Nina Herndon with a quality of life assessment to help you pinpoint the quality of life needs of all clients.

Nina also has developed the first activity kit for the quality of life, Joyful Moments .
Care Managers can use this activity kits to develop quality of life activities with their clients and home care and care managers that have home care can utilize the kit to teach their careproviders to create quality of life activities that give seniors they serve Joy in addition to care ‘

My GCM Operations Manual includes a product Concierge Companion that offers geriatric care managers a quality of life service that provides quality of life activivies to seniors through rereactional therapy aides who follow a GCM Care plan to indivualize quality of life activities for elders at any stage of their aging including dementia.

What Features Sell Care Management to Assisted Living?

June 12, 2019

What is a feature ?

What matters to Assisted Living when care managers market to them? Features are important. What is a feature? A fast internet connection is a feature, but the ability to quickly find what you want on the web is a benefit. Features are defined as surface statements about your product, such as what it can do, its dimensions and specs and so on.

Features matter because they show your customers hints about how well your product or service will deliver its benefits. ¨Benefits are more important than features but there are some times when features make all the difference: ¨Features that matter in GCM/ALCA are an emergency response to elders crisis, communication with the family (like monthly reports, emails calls, and texts) when needed,¨level of education of care managers and free consultation

What Is Your GCM Product for Assisted Living?

What also matters when marketing to Assisted Living is to have a specific product to offer rather than general geriatric care management. Buyers want something that will benefit them. So you have to design a product that is specifically needed in Assisted Living and will benefit the director. What Assisted Living Directors do not want to lose is residents or ” move outs. Keeping residents happy and not moving out is a benefit to Assisted Living and something ALCA members and care managers can sell.

As Assisted Living offers personal care, what they benefit from is quality of life activities to keep residents who are lonely, isolated or depressed -engaged in life and feeling more joy in each day. In my GCM Operations Manual, I have included 14 different geriatric care management products including Concierge Companion for Assisted Living, which offers Quality of Life activities. It also includes ” Move Management” another product that Assisted Living might use if a resident needs to move to another area or higher level of care.

Nina Herdon also has developed the first activity kit for the quality of life, Joyful Moments .
Care Managers can use this activity kits to develop quality of life activities with their clients is assisted living or at home. Care managers that have home care can utilize the kit to teach their care providers to create quality of life activities that give seniors they serve Joy.

Free Webinar -How to Make A GCM Sale to Assisted Living

10 Steps to Success in Selling Care Management to Assisted Living

FREE WEBINAR- 10 Steps to Success in Selling Care Management to Assisted Living

THIS WEBINAR BEGINS: Monday, June 24, 2019, 2 PM PST Ends 3:15 PM PST

DURING THIS FREE WEBINAR YOU WILL LEARN

How to Make a Winning First Impression at Assisted Living Sales Meeting- Preparing Presentation

What Referral Triggers to Use When Selling Geriatric Care Management to Assisted Living

What Feature to use When Selling Geriatric Care Management to Assisted Living

What Benefits to use When Selling Geriatric Care Management to Assisted Living

How to Close the Sale of Geriatric Care Management to Assisted Living

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6 Emotional Quality of Life Activities to Sell Care Management to Assisted Living

June 3, 2019

What is emotional Quality of Life

What is emotional quality of Life? It is a connection with others. We all, including older people, crave human contact. The professional relationship a care manager has with an elder is emotionally caring, just like a concierge physician. It trumps personal chefs and shoppers because you assess their problems and actually have a deep relationship.

In a world where the family no longer lives next door and supports each other, geriatric care managers can give elders that human contact and support that is gone in most sandwich generation families.

Emotional connection to pets ¨

Emotional connection to grandchildren ¨

Peace with oneself

When older people move into Assisted Living they frequently do not feel that emotional connection. They may have to leave their pets behind, the family does not live nearby or is overwhelmed with work and younger family members. If the older person just moved to Assisted Living they often feel like they landed on Mars and are not sure how to make friends or socialize with the Martians. They are not at peace with themselves

How Do You Find It

This is where a geriatric care manager or ALCA member can come in. By working with the Assisted Living facility and the family, the care manager can bolster the sagging quality of life of an elder who is unhappy with Assisted Living. They can do an Assessment for Emotional Quality of Life and create emotional connections –

For someone who just moved in assisted living, plan a tea party or cocktail party and invite new neighbors
Assess what activities the new resident likes, escort them to the activity and ask the instructor to pair them with a buddy.
Enroll the resident in the local Osher program and let them pick out a group to join. Example lunch group, dinner group, play reading, Dickens, New Yorker, Arrange transportation if necessary
Enroll the client in a group at a local senior center that reflects what they like to do, like knitting, needlepoint, poetry, and memoir writing gentle yoga, if that is not offered at the facility. Arrange senior transportation
Enroll a homebound client in Senior Center Without Walls .
Arrange a visit by Pet Therapy Dog to visit the older person, who left a pet behind or arrange for the elder to visit the local SPCA with an escort and transportation where the escort can interact with the animal.

Find out how to market GCM /ALCA Services to Assisted Living

10 Steps to Success in Selling Care Management to Assisted Living

FREE WEBINAR- 10 Steps to Success in Selling Care Management to Assisted Living

THIS WEBINAR BEGINS: Monday, June 24, 2019, 2 PM PST Ends 3:15 PM PST

Find Out More

DURING THIS FREE WEBINAR YOU WILL LEARN

How to Make a Winning First Impression at Assisted Living Sales Meeting- Preparing Presentation

What Referral Triggers to Use When Selling Geriatric Care Management to Assisted Living

What Feature to use When Selling Geriatric Care Management to Assisted Living

What Benefits to use When Selling Geriatric Care Management to Assisted Living

How to Close the Sale of Geriatric Care Management to Assisted Living

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How Catchy Copy Can Sign Up New Long Distance GCM Clients

June 1, 2019

Care managers need to create gold standard written copy to advertise their services to concierge customers but need a Wonder Woman spin that will make copy stand out from your competition. Here is a sample you may use for long distance care providers

“If you are a long distance family care provider for an elder, give yourself Wonder Woman as a powerful sister to help with the care of your aging family member.

Using a preeminent gold standard care manager is a preventative, prudent excellent choice for 3 reasons.

1. If there is a crisis, it is the safest choice to have the GCM solve it if you live long distance. In an urgent situation, the care manager can go to the hospital or emergency room.

2. This is more cost-effective than you getting on last-minute, expensive flights. You can still go but, like Wonder Woman, they can immediately be there to deal with the crisis and solve it. She is good insurance.

3. Before any crisis, you can have the GCM aka Wonder Woman will do an initial assessment and visit your older relative periodically. This is preventative because Wonder Woman can see and solve the problem before it becomes a health crisis that might put your loved one in the hospital.

Think of a care manager the way you do one of those blow-up beds. You can pump them up when you need in a crisis—perhaps avoid that crisis, and you yourself can sleep more soundly and with more peace of mind in your own bed.

Oh and she sometimes morphs into her alter ego- Superman who can who, as you know ” stands for truth justice and the American way ( and gold standard care ) ” and is ” faster than a speeding bullet”
Some of the things a geriatric care manager aka Wonder Woman and Superman can do for you are:

1. Save you money by helping keep your parent out of the hospital and you off emergency long-distance flights.

2.Facilitate a family discussion of needs, resources, and division of labor among friends family

3. Recommend ways to proactively prepare and plan for a parent’s possible health care crisis.

4. Work on family cooperation to formulate a realistic parent-care plan.

5.Assess the strengths and weaknesses of all of the potential caregivers

6. Help adult siblings resolve conflicts about care decisions.

7. Help siblings act together in the best interest of the parent

8.Decrease the tension between hometown and long distance siblings

9. Help the long-distance care provider deal with guilt and frustration that may result from their inability to provide more of the day-to-day care.

10.Locate the highest quality aging resources in your aging parents’ area quickly and without you having to do it

Join me in my latest free webinar

10 Steps to Success in Selling Care Management to Assisted Living

FREE WEBINAR- 10 Steps to Success in Selling Care Management to Assisted Living

THIS WEBINAR BEGINS: Monday, June 24, 2019, 2 PM PST Ends 3:15 PM PST

DURING THIS FREE WEBINAR YOU WILL LEARN

How to Make a Winning First Impression at Assisted Living Sales Meeting- Preparing Presentation

What Referral Triggers to Use When Selling Geriatric Care Management to Assisted Living

What Feature to use When Selling Geriatric Care Management to Assisted Living

What Benefits to use When Selling Geriatric Care Management to Assisted Living

How to Close the Sale of Geriatric Care Management to Assisted Living

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Serve Reminiscence Along With Hotdogs on Memorial Day

May 26, 2019

Reminiscence isn’t new. Before the printing press, storytellers and bards were how history was recorded-

Oral storytellers gave us the Odyssey and other valiant tales. History exists in their family, and Ulysses or Penelope might be sitting at your barbecue this coming Memorial Day- in the form of your aging parents.

But storytelling only works if the teller remembers the lines. Family history has to be captured when the older person still remembers. So holiday events are a perfect time to tap into that font before it flickers.

Here are some tips to use if they want to capture these family tales during Memorial Day weekend with aging parents—a perfect time to do this. Use empathetic listening if they can. Make all the messages you are are giving the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting- say, “I want to listen to them.”

Ask questions that prompt the story but don’t make judgments. If there are going to record the family tale, do it in a way that doesn’t distract or stop the older person from talking.

Start somewhere. If the elder isn’t going to tell stories on his or her own, start the story and see if they will follow along.” Did you go to Memorial Day parades when you were a kid or march in one after the war ( pick his war).” Did your parents have barbecues to start the summer”

Music is just next to memory in the brain shown by Alive Inside So 50’s Rock and Roll, Little Richard , Bill Haley and if they are older the Four Freshman

Here are two technology tools to help you with this legacy building for your older client

Life Bio-

Quick Voice Recorder to catch the memory on your phone

Check out my Book Handbook of Geriatric Care Management with more tools for legacy building written by David Lindeman Director Of the Center for Technology at UC Berkeley and Julie Menack of 21 st Care Solutions

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