elder abuse Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

How Can Geriatric Care Managers Help Stem the Rising Tide of Crisis in US Assisted Living Facilities?

March 29, 2019

Assisted Living has faced a metastasizing crisis for the past 20 years. Geriatric Care Managers can help. This calamity in care has been dramatically documented in Pro Publica’s Elderly at Risk and Haphazardly Protected

In 2013 CANR ( California Advocates for Nursing Homes Residents ) released a report “ Residential Care in California,” Unsafe, Unregulated and Unaccountable Among other staggering findings, they documented infrequent and inadequate state inspections to ensure safe or good care CANR also found that weak penalties for poor or dangerous care- left zero incentive to the facilities to improve care. They kept delivering the same sometimes life-threatening care to elders.

A 2019 American Society on Aging report, cited the perfect storm that brought this accelerating crisis toAssisted Living residents. Americans desire to age in place and not die in a nursing home coupled with a huge increase in private sector expansion in Assisted Living all over the US were both a big factor. These two causes were amplified, according to ASA, by facilities not being covered by Medicare, thus not having the federal oversight and requirements of the feds.

Among the major complaints that families themselves face is poor or no medications management, patients not being encouraged to participate in activities or not enough activities or both, residents not being bathed as often as is needed, and animosity between families and staff members for family members showing up unannounced or being micromanagers

How can geriatric care management help this crisis?

GCM can monitor the care of an older person frequently (every week, every other week-) compensating for the long intervals between state inspectors visits already cited as a problem. This is especially helpful for long distance care providers.
GCM can monitor personal care like bathing grooming getting to necessary Dr.s appointments and work with facility and family to make sure this happens.
Geriatric care managers will do a one to one assessment of the care of the older person in the Assisted Living then find a solution to any problems they find and implement it making sure that problems are solved before a crisis
If they find poor care of patients in the Assisted living they are mandated reporters and will immediately report the abusive problems to Adult Protective Services.
Geriatric Care Management can set up or monitor medications.
Geriatric Care managers will do a Quality of Life assessment for elders who are not engaging in activities and find what activity within the Assisted Living or in the community if the facility has a poor activity program. They can engage the older person by hiring a Concierge Companion to engage the older person in the activity.

If you want to implement a Concierge Companion service/ product in your care management practice check out my GCM Operations Manual with step by step Concierge Companion procedures and marketing, in addition to 13 other innovative geriatric care management products/services.

10 Steps to Serve Demanding, Difficult ,Wealthy Long Term Aging Clients Like Donald Trump

January 19, 2019

How Do You Deliver and serve long-term clients from the top 10% financially- who can offer sustainable financial growth to your Aging Life or GCM company?

You offer superior professional Gold Standard Concierge Service to Client and Family- Care they demand.

You offer preventative care to avoid crisis and chaos that can be there MO -Helps Keep Clients Out of E room and nursing homes and keep them at home where they wish to be and you from losing the case.

You write or rewrite your business plan that has a value proposition in your marketing plan to reach your target markets to concierge clients in the upper 10% and the third parties who in many cases serve them as well, like elder law attorneys and upscale assisted living.

You Use the value proposition from your business plan – leading to one-time/long term client engagements – How

Deliver gold standard concierge service
Offer confidential services that clients and families can trust
Do not have the VIP syndrome with these sometimes famous clients
Serve whole aging family where adult children are entitled and difficult as well.
Provide a GPS through health care needs so that best care is delivered seamlessly
Have a full GCM toolbox and know all community resources –to change tools as client change and age safely in place
Refer or provide skilled background checked home care aides who meet the need of entitled clients
Be willing and skilled enough to accept difficult entitled clients who are narcissistic, demanding and unreasonable like Donald Trump , Sumner Redstone, Huguette Clark
Have someone on your staff who has a clinical background in dysfunctional aging families, and psychodynamic diagnosis, and understands undue influence
Have upscale resources in your resource database like private drivers, private chefs, car services, upscale golf clubs that cater to older clients, and upscale assisted living

Join me in my new FREE Webinar
Learn to Market Like Your Business Depended on it!
When: January 23, 2019
2PM-3PM PST
LearnHow to develop lead generation and tactics through third partiesHow to position your agency so it stands out from your competitors
How to develop or rewrite a strategic marketing plan in 2019 that brings more customers
How to use branding to build positive gut feelings about your agency
How to set up leads generation with both a speakers bureau to do co-presentations & join the rubber chicken circuit to reach adult children and targeted audiences:
•
• Sign -Up –

Find out more about a value proposition and subscribe to my Youtube channel Geriatric Care 1 to find out more about marketing Aging Life or Geriatric Care Management.

Are Your Clients Skating Away From the Holiday Like Joni Mitchel?

December 21, 2018

What are the signs that a family wants to skate away from Christmas gathering and skip it altogether Printer-friendly version of this lyric

It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

As Joni Mitchel told us on her melancholy 1971 masterwork, “Blue” Celebrations with family on the holidays can often want you to take the ice and skate away from.

What are the signs that the family wants to ditch the dreaded dinner altogether?

1. Spending time with dysfunctional families often causes lots of seasonal lubrication – “A Holiday on Ice” like David Sedaris tells us. So # 1 there will be too much drinking and the resulting family drunken insults and fights

2..Distancing & cut off- are pulling away and having nothing to do with family or an individual in your family.

4.You find adult children who have not spoken to parents or siblings for years.

The celebrity feud and cut off between

Angry roommates or sisters in christmas sitting on a couch in the living room at home

Angela Jolie and her Dad actor John Voigt is a well-publicized example

What prompted Jolie’s reconciliation – helping grandchildren- Jolie- reconciled with her Dad because of her children’s need for a grandparent and the knowledge that your children just have a very different version of a relationship with your parents than you do.

When you assess the aging family as a professional you look at several signs of dysfunction. Contentiousness and anger are two other signs- the ripping pattern of divorce, remarriage, or other disruptions in relationships that shred the balance within the family system- both hacked by anger and contentiousness.

Gathering all these angry, contentious, cut off, divorced, often drunken insulters- ex-spouses, stepchildren, left behind blood children, deadbeat Dad’s and pour on alcohol and hold the mistletoe -you have the wrathful explosion that is that is dysfunctional family skating the holiday on ice.

Find out more about in Emily Salz and Lynn Hackstaff’s chapter Family Conflicts, Dependence and Mutuality: Care Management and the Dysfunctional Family. Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition.Jones and Bartlet.

When they call you be prepared, be ready, be a little fearful. Here are some tips.

10 Steps to Market to & Serve Wealthy, Demanding Long Term Aging Clients Like Donald Trump

September 6, 2018

How Do You Deliver Your Value Proposition of serving long-term clients from the top 10% financially- who can offer sustainable financial growth to your Aging Life or GCM company?

You offer superior professional Concierge Service to Client and Family- Care they demand when you need it

You offer preventative care to avoids Crisis -Helps Keep Clients Out of E room and nursing homes and Keep them at home where they wish to be

You write or rewrite your business plan that has a value proposition that includes your marketing plan to reach your target markets o concierge clients in the upper 10% and the third parties who in many cases serve them as well, like elderlaw attorneys and upscale assisted living.

You Use the value proposition from your business plan – leading to one-time/long term client engagements – How

Deliver concierge service
Offer confidential services that clients and families can trust
Adjust your plan of care as professionally needed for family & client
Serve whole aging family
Provide a GPS through health care needs so that best care is delivered seamlessly
Have a full GCM toolbox and know all community resources –to change tools as client change and age safely in place
Refer or provide skilled background checked home care aides who meet the need of entitled clients
Be willing and skilled enough to accept difficult entitled clients who are narcissistic, demanding and unreasonable like Donald Trump , Sumner Redstone, Huguette Clark
Have someone on your staff who has a clinical background in dysfunctional aging families, and psychodynamic diagnosis
Have upscale resources in your resource database like private drivers, private chefs, car services, upscale golf clubs that cater to older clients, and upscale assisted living

Find out more about a value proposition and subscribe to my Youtube channel Geriatric Care 1 to find out more about marketing Aging Life or Geriatric Care Management.

Did You Find Elder Fiscal Abuse Over the Holidays?

January 6, 2018

When you visited an elder family member over the holidays did you see something ” fishy” going on with their finances?? Was money missing from their accounts, expensive items purchased that the elder did not buy. Are they getting calls for donations from odd sources. All this can be elder fiscal abuse.This type of elder bank robbery represents a 36 billion heist and growing

Fiscal Elder abuse can be detected during the holiday season by visiting family / Paula Span, in her New Old Age column in the New York Times gave some very savvy tips that you should check out.

The worst perpetrators are not professional con artists. The most dangerous elder financial abusers aren’t folks running a scam like Bernie Madoff or crooks offering free lunches to retirees then swindling their money. Vicious financial abusers are most frequently the older person’s own family.

All we have to do is look at the infamous Brooke Astor case. Her son Anthony was convicted of siphoning millions and sentenced to one to three years in prison.
After the trial, one prosecutor called it “grand theft Astor,” with Mrs. Astor’s son on an “a six-year crime spree involving a series of larcenies”
A survey of State Adult Protective Abuse of Adults Over Sixty showed that the most common fiscal abuser was a son or daughter. Adult children perpetrated 33 % of the fiscal exploitation substantiated by APS. Other family members were the next biggest group of fiscal abusers investigated by APS. These other kin represented almost 22% of the financial abuser reported nationwide to adult protective services . So schooling midlife adult children visiting over the holidays to do some discreet detective work to check, desks bank account etc. What is important is they are not confrontive with the parent but to present questions as support for Mom and Dad
What are red flags for adult fiscal abuse
Financial abuse can have many faces
➢ Someone paying bills but bills are not paid
➢ Money missing from accounts
➢ Family member /caregiver withdrawing large amounts of money from accounts
➢ Someone taking money under false pretenses,
➢ forgery
➢ forced property transfers
➢ purchasing expensive items with the older person’s money without permission
➢ denying the older person access to his or her own funds or home.
➢ Scams perpetrated by salespeople
Elders rarely report elder abuse according to a Met life study on the crime. Only the tip of the iceberg of this con is reported for various reasons. Seniors often believe that they are responsible for allowing themselves to be swindled or abused. They frequently fear they will be placed in a nursing home if they report the crime. Older victims hold back in turning the perpetrator in because they are afraid the person will harm them further. And finally, since the tormentor is often a son or daughter their motherly urge is to protect the criminal in their nest.

If You saw fiscal abuse during the Holiday season visit to loved ones. report it to Adult Protective Services and call an aging life care manager . They are experts at helping you make sure this does not happen in the future with vulnerable elders.

Contact

Connect with Cathy

Get Cathy’s “10 Critical Success Steps to a Profitable Aging Life or GCM Business”