Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

Family Caregivers No Spring Chickens- New York Times

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The New York Times ran a scathing story yesterday on the plight of family caregivers. They care for ones they love for free, while their own health crumbles. Everyone who reads this blog  has or will be touched by this.

 

Free caregiver services were valued at $450 billion per year in 2009—up from $375 billion in year 2007. At $450 billion in 2011, the value of informal unpaid caregiving exceeded the value of paid home care, exceeded total Medicaid spending in 2009, exceeded Wal-Mart sales ($408 billion), and nearly exceeded total expenditures for the Medicaid program in 2009 ($509 billion).

 

What is overlooked in the Times article  is an answer to this issue a ‘caregiver assessment”.

Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition out this fall, will have a new chapter on geriatric care managers doing ” caregiver assessments” and changing their life because, like Mrs. Swartz in the Times story, they are “NO Spring Chickens” and caring is harder on the caregiver than the care receiver.

 

Are You A Long Distance Care Provider?

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May is National Geriatric Care Manager Month. If you are a long distance care provider, hiring a geriatric care manager is a great support system. Before your next visit to your long distance family member, call a geriatric care manager in their area.

 

Make an appointment to go to their office and meet with them. Most GCM’s will see you to discuss their services at no charge. You can shop around and interview a few if you wish. Geriatric care managers can be located on the GCM web site . Use your long distance family’s parent’s zip code.
It’s a preventative and prudent idea to have a geriatric care manager in the town where your older relative resides. If there is a crisis, it is cheaper to have them solve it. In an urgent situation, they can go to the hospital or emergency room. This is more sane and cost effective than you getting on last minute, expensive flights. You can still go but they can immediately be there to deal with the crisis. They are good insurance.

 

Before any crisis, you can have the GCM do an initial assessment and visit your older relative periodically (once a month, once every two months). This is preventative. That way they are there for you when you need them and have all the information to solve the problem. Think of them the way you do one of those blow-up beds. You can pump them up when you need them in a crisis—perhaps avoid that crisis, and you yourself can sleep more soundly and with more peace of mind in your own bed. Some of the things a geriatric care manager 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 meeting 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 realistic parent-care plan.

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

6. Help adult siblings resolve conflicts about care decisions.

7.Help adult  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 aging resources (both no -cost trough the older Americans Act) in your aging parents area quickly and without you having to do it

If Your Care Plan Rejected – How to Get Accepted

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Care Plans Need to be acceptable. Sometimes the client, family or third party may SIMPLY REJECT  your care plan intervention.Let’s try an example and see what to do.Here is your intervention for Mr. Jefferson and Sally Hemingway to improve their communications with their families and their are issues -see You-Tube about Mr. Jefferson

1. Improve Communication with Mr. Jefferson’s out of town family. GCM or aging professional ‘s goal is to be to have Tom Jefferson and Sally Hemingway able to use Skype on the computer to videoconference with Mr. Jefferson’s out of town children and Sally’s out of town family.

Interventions)

a. GCM to bring over different styles of headphones to try with Mr. Jefferson’s s hearing aid

b. GCM to give the recommendations to long distance daughter Alice to purchase through her discount at work.

c. GCM to arrange for computer consultant Pleasure Point Computer to come to house to set up Skype, enlarge the fonts and icons on computer on both Sally and Mr. Roosevelt’s computers and teach them how to use the program.

d. GCM to email out of town children to explain the plan and give the requirements (, install Skype) Have out of town children also sign up, as it is free.

e. GCM to arrange with children and Mr. Jefferson a regular time to talk on Skype k. (I.e. Sunday at 11 am)

f. GCM to ask Sally arranges time to “Skype” with her children and grandchildren allowing more opportunities to connect with her family.

As a GCM or an aging professional you arrange all this BUT Mr. Jefferson rejects it saying it is too hard to adapt to new technology. Also one of his son’s who is says he is a technophobic refuses to agree

So your care plan intervention is rejected .

 

However Sally accepts this and starts using Skype with good result, helping her feel closer to her grandchildren.

 

You decide it better to come up with a new care plan intervention for Mr. Jefferson with a telephone conference with his adult children, which he accepts this new intervention.

 

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