care manager Archives ⋆ Page 2 of 60 ⋆ Cathy Cress

What are the 7 Steps to a Successful Concierge Client Inquiry Call on Coming Holidays ?

November 27, 2018

Intake is the most critical point in opening or losing a case. A successful intake means increasing your aging life or geriatric care management business. Over the Holidays you will get many desperate calls from adult children visiting their family and discovering- unwrapped gifts, a disheveled Mom – trouble they may not have known about if they lived long distance or just saw Mom infrequently.Here are steps to success over the holiday intake or any inquiry
1. You must assure the caller that your geriatric care management services can be counted on to thoroughly assess the elderly person’s and family caregiver’s situation at the intake, determine the level of care and level of GCM monitoring to sell your services.
2. You sell these services through convincing the caller that you offer highly personalized and compassionate approach to the family and older client. This breaks down to gaining client and family trust that your GCM services are the very best path leading them the care they desperately need- led by a professional guide they can count on.
3. You persuade them that they will get unbeatable customer appreciation, you will exceed their customer expectations, ensure the quality of life for the older client and offer a concierge driven service.
4. You explain how your hands on professional staff can make families relieved and happy because they understand they save precious time and overwhelming stress by using professional GCM’s.
5. You show them you can access all community services and resource options they could not find alone and are now available to them through your services.
6. In this one sometimes short call, you show potential new clients how your concierge care management service will solve their problems through -you the GCM being there for them every step of the way.
7. You persuade them that by scheduling the next step, a free complimentary consultation call, you will help them make sound decisions based on reality and assessment.

The GCM sells all of this through a free complimentary consultation done by a compassionate and highly skilled professional the director of the agency

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Ten Clinical Steps to Tame the Turbulence of the Holiday Season in The Entitled Concierge Family

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Wednesday, November 8 @11am Pacific Time

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LIVE Geriatric Care Clinical Training

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Join me and learn how to come to the rescue of Concierge Entitled families who find coal in their stocking

The holiday season in the aging concierge family triggers amped up turmoil. Mom can’t cook the turkey, she forgets to wrap presents, Dad’s not only had too many cocktails but he’s wandering the neighborhood.

Learn the 2-part inquiry using a complimentary consultation to make the sale to the needy yet always dissatisfied entitled / concierge family
Learn the 10 key steps to handle these fractured families when the adult children frantically call a care manager for help.
Pinpoint the 7 critical clinical steps to work with this panicked entitled demanding family, to ensure you give them hope
Master the 10 tasks in holding an impromptu family meeting during a holiday crisis with adult siblings and family during the frightful, not festive family chaos
Understand 5 tools necessary to work with long distance concierge and entitled families in a parent care crisis over their thankless Thanksgiving and blue, blue Christmas or Hanukah
Identify the 4 parts to implementing a calming care plan of containment and on-going involvement with the entitled concierge family who serve the holiday on the rocks.

6 Ways to Thank Your Employees Taking On Call While you Celebrate the Holiday

November 26, 2018

We just passed Thanksgiving, when we offer thanks with our friends, loved ones, family. But what about your employees this holiday season. How will you thank the very people that power your business and profit and may be on call for you right now?

“Truly, from bosses I liked, anything was great because I appreciated that they thought of me. From “bad” bosses, anything would annoy me. You can’t make up for being a jerk with a token of any kind once a year.”

Ideas for inexpensive but really appreciated gifts for Care Managers and staff– cards to grocery stores or department stores, a gift certificate from Amazon all given with a nice personal handwritten note.

Staff Thank You Gifts All Year.

You need to bill 85% of your client hours. When a care manager does bill’s 85% write them a handwritten thank you note being grateful for having the amount of productivity to keep the business thriving. Handwriting is not a lost art. It sends a message that you take the time personally to really care what the employee does for your business.

2. Send a handwritten thank you note to each staff member during the year to applaud something they did. Saying thanks about something specific may be the ultimate reward. If you do it selectively yet authentically, a thank you note may be pinned above your employee’s desk for years. Create a formal letter recognizing your employee ’s achievement. Sign it and use the company’s seal to give the letter something extra. If you really want to do it right, frame it.

3. Name an employee of the month in your newsletter with their picture. Give them a gift to tell them you are grateful for their hard work. Create a formal letter recognizing your employee’s achievement. Sign the letter and use the company’s seal to give the letter something extra. If you really want to do it right, frame it too.

4. Have an employee holiday party and give gifts to all employees for being such excellent care managers and for billing the 85% you need them to bill so you will all have employment.

5.Plan employee picnics, birthday parties, anniversary parties to thank them publicly throughout the year.

6. B.J Spitler , one of the first and I might say the greatest care managers, founded Age Concerns in San Diego in 1982. She gave gifts of massages to her care managers. A brilliant gift, a massage recognizes the tough emotional work that care manager’s do and their need to take care of themselves- which you as their employer are doing.

Give Thanks Throughout the year.

The Ice Storm Cometh Again This Thanksgiving For Aging Parents

November 19, 2018

Kids who grew up in the 70’s will soon have Thanksgiving with their 70 or 80

something aging parents. Will they recall the ” Ice Storm”?

In the film, it is Thanksgiving weekend in the early 70″s and a boyish Tobey Mc Guire returns home from prep school to a Thanksgiving feast that his sister starts with this prayer.

” Dear Lord, thank you for this Thanksgiving holiday. And for all the material possessions we have and enjoy. And for letting us white people kill all the Indians and steal their tribal lands. And stuff us like pigs, even though children in Asia are being napalmed.”

So we begin the descent down the cusp of the 1970’s as the nearly normal family shapeshifts into dysfunctional in Ang Lee’s brilliant film The Ice Storm

Lee’s Thanksgiving classic is the perfect reflection of some family’s plunge into the early 70’s season of hell.

If you’re in your 40’s and grew up with parents gone haywire through 70’s social change, you will remember the ice storm.

Divorce imploded the family, as we knew it. If you were a parent then you may recall, Key Parties, or Nixon Resigning, Deep Throat or hear David Bowie who did the soundtrack to the film.

With Lou Reed you can loop back to his fabulous song of that spins the period Walk on the Wild Side and maybe recall the template for it the entire era the -book, Open Marriage.

Children of this 70’s social tumult may now share another Thanksgiving with aging parents who put them through hell. What will they do when they find they have to care for those same parents who did not care for them?

When they return to Thanksgiving they may call an aging life or geriatric care manager. Are you ready?

Why Does the Nearly Normal Aging Family Melt Down Over the Holidays

November 11, 2018

Many concierge aging families are healthy or a nearly normal family. But discovering they must care for a parent can force them into a tailspin. When the parent figure in the family begins to suffer the losses of aging, a filial crisis occurs.

What’s that-? That is accepting your parent in the here and now. When a Mom or Dad is no longer the north stars they were to the family, midlife adult children need to learn to learn to balance parental love and duty with independence. These midlife kids must create a two-way relationship instead of the parent sending, love, money and nurture only one way. This can throw adult children in a nearly normal family into a parental panic.

Nurturing and care have always been a one-way street – ending with them. Were they selfish – no? That’s what good parents do- nurture their children through all the stages of life. However, this new stage takes a two-way street.

The healthy nearly normal family is also thrown off balance by a shock to the system- someone has to replace the Queen or King bee. The person who took the lead role on the family stage has not shown up or forgets their lines. On the holidays they don’t decorate the Christmas tree, forget the words to the blessing on Chanukah, the recipe for Latkes or their famous Christmas sugar cookies.

Now the adult kids must make the Christmas cookies, Latkes, lead the Chanukah prayers or host Christmas. Many are reluctant to step up to the plate, take over the work of a ritual- be the head of the family

At this giant pause in family play, the family system, even in the normal family must face the loss of control in the system because the parents or parent figures usually have that control. When they can no longer manage on their own, or function as the main gear or guide that moves the family system forward, even the normal spins out of control.

Join me in my new Webinar

5 Ways to Tame the Turbulence of Holiday Meltdown in Aging Families

During the busiest season for care management referrals-

You Will Learn:

How to give hope to frantic children who call, after seeing their aging parent struggling with the rituals
How to sell services during intake, to desperate adult child callers
How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
How to use financial forecasting to prepare for growth during the holidays
How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holiday

BY THE AUTHOR OF HANDBOOK OF GERIATRIC CARE MANAGEMENT

Do Holidays Open the Sibling Wound Mom Loved You Best –Treated With Lots of Alcohol?

November 9, 2018

Holidays can sometimes trigger old brother or sister hurts that never healed. Joy to the World can turn into something from Black Sabbath. Perhaps an adult child avoids midlife siblings and family Thanksgiving because there’s “bad blood” from childhood. Maybe they steer clear of Mom’s holiday dinner so you can skip seeing sisters and brothers who gouged childhood wounds. The scar has built up over decades and if they attend they dive for the alcohol which is plentiful in these ritual celebrations. What can result is nasty sibling fights over the past not Mom and Dad needing care.

Maybe there just was not enough love your rickety family nest, making siblings scramble for the few caring crumbs. Kid brothers could have slugged other siblings behind Mom’s back. Maybe a sister got the new prom dress when younger girls did Goodwill or the hand me down.

Divorce often shattered families leaving you with two houses, two beds, two sets of parents, and stepsiblings who fought for parent’s diminished love. No matter what the grievance story – holidays are when they might want to think about forgiveness because all hands are needed on deck when parents are failing with age.

The season of not so much joy brings calls to care managers from desperate adult children noticing melting down parent’s who are fixture in the family. They call a GCM for advice and the main task is often to make a family sibling team that was not a team 30 years ago.

Need help in creating that team?

Join me in my new free Webinar

5 Ways to Tame the Turbulence of Holiday Meltdown in Aging Families

During the busiest season for care management referrals-

You Will Learn:

How to give hope to frantic children who call, after seeing their aging parent struggling with the rituals
How to sell services during intake, to desperate adult child callers
How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos among siblings
How to use financial forecasting to prepare for growth during the holidays
How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
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6 Ways to Thank Your Employees Taking On Call While you Celebrate the Holiday

The Ice Storm Cometh Again This Thanksgiving For Aging Parents

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