caregiver mental health Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

10 Alarm Bells to Give ” Just Shopping” Long Distance Callers Before Holiday

December 24, 2020

You will be Showered With Calls Over the Holidays

Long-distance family members from nearly normal or dysfunctional families will call you frantically from now on.

Why?

It’s almost Christmas, Hanukkah and Thanksgiving just passed but they could not see their older parents because of the COVID Risk.

They are having to manage their over 65 Mom and Dad’s Shelter in place from afar plus oversee their own families risk plus their own COVID laden holiday. These long-distance family caregivers were already reaching

burnout from constant pre-COVID travel and caring on top of their own work-life demands.

They are reaching implosion so they are going to call you.

Test to Give the Burnt Out Caregiver Calls FOR Information Before the Holidays

If they call for information before the holiday and are not ready to move forward, you can proactively offer them questions from this list of alarm bells that they can answer now or they can monitor during now and New Year holiday that could trigger engaging your services after they compare notes on a post-holiday call with you.

Below is a list of red flags. If they see any red signals on Thanksgiving, Hanukkah,

remotely or in-person if they take the very dangerous risk of travel on Christmas-encourage them that is the time to do something about it by hiring you as a care manager. You can question them with this a checklist of worrisome signs that signal the need for a local geriatric care manager,

Alarm Bells List – Dealing with Long Distance Aging Relatives Before or During the Holidays

Unpaid bills if long-distance family members monitor bill pay from afar
Missed appointments with their physicians that long-distance care provider monitor with their doctors
Clutter reported by neighbors, friends local senior agencies a home that was once always neat
Weight loss reported by the aging parents Dr’s or local visitors
Memory loss, change in short-term memory when they zoom, call facetime, etc.
Poor grooming for a person who was once meticulously, observed by local visitors friends senior agencies food delivery who visit.
Reports of getting lost
Reports of wandering
Refusing to go to holiday religious services with friends or church transportation to holiday religious services
refusing any suggestion or conversely agreeing to everything with-out consideration
Mood swings, getting angry when normally easy going
Refusing to go to medical providers
Not taking care of activities of daily living: cooking, bathing, dressing, housekeeping, etc.
Entering contests, credit card maxed out on shopping channels
Set up a meeting when the holidays end. You have helped them proactively, begin to engage your services.

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5 Vital Clinical Tools to Help Aging Dysfunctional Families-Post Horrid Holidays-

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Give frantic adult children hope when they desperately call after the holiday

Join me and learn how to come to the rescue of concierge dysfunctional families who found coal in their stocking.

Learn how to!
- Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders
- Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family
- Master Vital Clinical Tools, you to solve client problems
- Take Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
- Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist
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Best Tool for Dysfunctional Family on Holidays- Hope

December 22, 2020

Hope is the Best Tool on the Holidays

During Christmas and Hannaka family caregivers, especially in the dysfunctional family can be drinking or numbing themselves from the pain of caregiving. They will ruin the holiday celebration one way or another. Maybe they are drugging themselves with the telly or abusing prescription drugs. Depression and anxiety ( rife among caregivers) are predictors of increased alcohol use. Social isolation, which is experienced by some caregivers, is also predictive of increased alcohol use.

How do you as a geriatric care manager change the script for these aging dysfunctional families – family caregivers and older members who are supposed to care for but can’t. How does a professional GCM make the characters transform?

It’s actually simple –but loaded with skill- give them hope. You need to and use yourself to give them hope that things will change. It’s the best tool in a geriatric care manager toolbox- especially on and after the dreaded holidays.

Use of Self

The use of Self is perhaps the most powerful tool for geriatric care managers. The use of Self provides families with guarded optimism. GCM’s have to offer a vision of the future that is based not only on a desire for hopeful outcomes. This has come from our own clinical knowledge and belief that change to their nasty crippled, family

system is indeed possible.

By being direct, empathetic, and

nonjudgmental, we become a holding bay for

stressed caregivers, creating a place of safety, c

onfidentiality, consistency, and support.

Finally, GCM’s offer our clients a model of

perseverance. By giving up on the possibility of

positive change and by exploring all options,

the GCM enables families to feel that, regardless of the outcome, they have done all that they can to support the older adult.

Be like Judy Garland on the holiday offering hope

Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
Let your heart be light

From now on
our troubles will be out of sight

Give the” Merry Christmas – next year

Sign Up for My Free January Webinar

5 Vital Clinical Tools to Help Aging Dysfunctional Families-Post Horrid Holidays-

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Give frantic adult children hope when they desperately call after the holiday

Join me and learn how to come to the rescue of concierge dysfunctional families who found coal in their stocking.

Learn how to!

Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders
Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family
Master Vital Clinical Tools, you need to solve client problems
Take Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist

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Helping Older Adults Stay Socially Connected While Sheltering in Place

July 17, 2020

How do we stay socially connected while social distancing? During COVID -19?

We all need contact with other people

During COVID -19 this becomes harder as we age, especially as older people are at a greater risk to contract COVID- 19. Many of these elders live alone and are sheltering in place. But they suffer from isolation as they miss the social connections that bring joy to their lives. Some become depressed in the lonely world of shelter in place.

Connections promote wellness and are essential for good health. COVID-19 is not a time to completely isolate ourselves, rather, we need to take this time as an opportunity to foster relationships in new and creative ways, like technology and creative old fashioned pastimes. This takes a family member to help with, which is part of the socialization. If you live long distance find a local friend or neighbor who will wear a mask and social distance or if you are a long-distance care provider hire a geriatric care manager who can place a quality of life companion with your older relative like Geriatric Care Management Agency like Lifespan that offers a Well-Being Program

Use Technology

Call or video chat family and friends, if you have a computer or phone use facetime or Skype but better to use better technology, designed for seniors like Alexa Show 8
Have a virtual meal together invite your loved one through a link on Zoom and order a meal online for both of you at the same time.
Purchase Birdsong for seniors an easy touch tablet for games and to connect with family and friends
Help elder join a book club at the local library as libraries are opening up again
Help elder sign up for on-line local community college extension classes that might interest him or her
Subscribe to free online games for seniors through AARP
Have your older loved one play brain games for entertainment with Luminosity- https://www.lumosity.com/en/
Subscribe to audible
Identify what music they like and help them arrange to watch and listen on television or TV if they have an I Phone Make an I Phone playlist of their favorite
Find art they like and have them tour Google virtual museum collections
Go back in time

Write letters or give you loved-one a gift box or notecards with pictures or art they like, print out address labels for them and give them an address book with family and friends addresses
Play board games, word games, or even work on jigsaw puzzles together when you visit.
Watch a movie together. There are a variety of apps that can help you watch movies together, but it may be easier to find the same movie, and for everyone to watch at the same time. Get the popcorn ready!
Enroll a homebound client in a Senior Center Without Walls where they read books to them on the phone.
Take a walk. Fresh air is good for the body and mind. Movement is a great way to release endorphins in the body, which can soothe any existing feelings of stress but wear a mask, and stay 6 ft apart
Sit outside the front of your house with a mask on and wave to those walking by. The act of smiling raises endorphins.
For a loved one who likes nature, if they like crafts make a birdseed ornament purchase a birdfeeder and hang outside the window where the loved one can see. Get a bird field guide for the area and help identify birds who visit the ornaments or feeder to feed.
Subscribe to audiobooks for seniors from your library
REMINISCENCE- a win win-as people age they love this and you get their memories
Give your parent Storyworth. Print the prompts and drop off to your loved one then pick up and enter using the dictation on your phone then send it into Storyworth. At the end of the year, they get a printed book of reminiscence.
Join ancestry yourself and bring your computer to your older loved one’s home and show them your family tree as you build it. They can give you family history and memories as you create the family tree that you would miss when they are gone.
Get out old family albums and have them identify people in photos then upload the photos later to Google photos so you have both names of relatives, stories of pictures and photos digitally saved.

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California Cuts Pushing Frail Elders into the Cesspools of COViD-19

May 22, 2020

Here in California, the frailest, poorest and oldest in the state are being potentially knifed in the back by slashing budget cuts to the very services that keep them out of nursing homes.

The Multipurpose Senior Services Program , one of the first geriatric care management programs in the nation, designed to keep fail elders out of nursing homes, is set to axed from the California State budget.

The Governor has also proposed elimination of $2.9 million of state funding and $3.9 million in federal matching funds for the 11 statewide Caregiver Resource Centers,

providing critical respite care and counseling to caregivers of adults with chronic and disabling health conditions.

Both programs were designed 4 decades ago to keep elders at home and out of more expensive nursing homes and staunch family caregiver burnout. They offer huge safety nets, designed to keep frail seniors in the community.

MSSP is of a daycare program providing rich social and health services to frail elders and their families. The Care Resources Program caregiver respite and support to overwhelmed family caregivers.

These programs save the state a bundle of money. Each of the MSSP clients is disabled enough to be eligible for nursing homes and poor enough to be eligible for MediCal. So instead of the state paying $80,000 or $90,000 per person per year in a nursing home, the State pays only on average a little over $5,000 for the person to be in MSSP.This makes the cuts both fiscally stupid and mystifying.

What California government is doing is ripping giant holes in this web plummeting 45,000 seniors into the cesspool of COVID-19 skilled nursing facilities, where almost half of California COVID-19 deaths occured.

Without the services and supports available through MSSP, and the Caregiver Resource Center, many older Californians will have no other choice but to be admitted to nursing homes, where nearly half of all deaths related to COVID-19 have occurred.

But the doors may be barred. Given the high risk of COVID-19 in nursing homes, owners are reluctant to take new patients. So, the elimination of the Caregiver Resources Center and MSSP is really a death sentence to frail elders. It leaves no fire extinguisher for caregiver burnout of the family caregivers who care for elders with the toughest disease: brain impairment- Alzheimer’s, stroke, dementia, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s other conditions that may cause memory loss or confusion.

This may cause a cascade effect- placement of these horribly demented elders, into the plague-infested nursing home or also to death’s door

Governor Newsome has been a national hero as the first governor to issue a stay at home order to close counties down in California. He slowed the spread of coronavirus and kept California in a safe zone compared to most other states. But this was at the cost of taxpayer dollars as 4.7 Californians were put out of work.

He finds himself in a double bind now with a chasm of a budget hole, that he is trying up to fill with cuts like the ones proposed to the senior program. But the cuts will lead seniors to nursing homes costing $80,000 a year instead of the $5000 for MSSP into those caldrons of coronavirus

California is always the canary in the coal mine- the innovator that most states follow. So, these cuts can be expected across the nationwide. Who is the real villain in these cuts, the Trump Presidency. 875 billion was approved in the House of representatives in the HEROES Act. Cutting both programs saves $119 million. But these cuts would be eliminated if Congress OKs this aid for state and local governments — a prospect many state lawmakers believe is unlikely as President Trump is threatening to veto the money to the states . This has spurred a cacophony of outrage from local legislators and senior advocates. angered state lawmakers from both

major political parties who say it’s irresponsible in light of the coronavirus pandemic that has spread through nursing homes across the state. It’s one of many conflicts emerging this week as lawmakers hold public hearings examining Newsom’s proposal before they must vote on a spending plan by June 15.

Want to help save these programs

PUBLIC COMMENTS – WRITTEN: Submit written public comments by email to: sbud.committee@sen.ca.gov

The 2 Deadliest US Sites of COVID-19 Nursing Homes & Prisons

May 2, 2020

PRISON INMATES AND NURSING HOME PATIENTS NOT 6FT APART – 6 FEET UNDER

70% of inmates in federal prisons have COVID-19. In Kansas, the Lansing Correctional Facility had a riot of inmates over COVID-19 lack of care or protection It took the rebellion to get the coronavirus testing PPE and care. The Bureau of Prisons in Kansas confirmed finally that 79 staff have coronavirus and 88 prisons and prisoners dead.

Older residents in nursing homes cannot rebel like prisoners. Many can’t even walk. The Atlantic Magazine just published an article, We are Killing Elders Now. The writer states “In at least six states, these fatalities account for half of all COVID-19 deaths, and according to the World Health Organization, half of all coronavirus fatalities in Europe have been traced to nursing homes too. Some of this mortality is linked to long-term-care facilities that are shoddily run or that violate health standards. But most of them are doing the best they can with what they have. And they don’t have much”.

KAISER FOUNDATION NURSING HOME STAFFING AND USE OF PPE NOT REQUIRED IN MOST STATES

Kaiser reports -Staff Screening. It is more common for states to recommend rather than require daily screening of staff for illness in NFs (24 states recommend, 16 states + DC require)

Use of PPE. More states recommend (23 states) than require (7 states + DC) staff to use PPE

Two States that require testing for coronavirus of ALL residents of nursing homes are Maryland where 556 have died as of the Washington Post article. and Tennessee

THE FEDS HAVE NO CMS FEDERAL GUIDELINES OR REPORTING

We have no federal guidelines for safety testing according to an article by the Kaiser Foundation

It is now estimated that 16,000 deaths have occurred in nursing homes and that is without the federal government revealing any numbers and not making available any testing. But the numbers are probably huge- if we could just do testing.

CMS announced it would have a meeting of a “panel” of experts “ sometime at the end of May”. After probably 20,000 older people died and the feds did nothing this shows their sense of urgency about this pandemic’s national “elder cleansing”.

WHAT CONNECTS PRISONS AND NURSING HOMES – CONCENTRATION CAMPS

So, what is the connection between the viral spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes and prisons- 6 feet ? Prisoners and residents, in nursing homes, and prisons cannot social distance. Jails and prisons have human beings crammed together with no choice. Nursing homes have 2 beds or if you are on Medicaid three to a room. Neither group has a choice to social distance. They are ” concentrated” as in concentration camps or death camps.

Do SOMETHING – HELP NURSING HOMES PREVENT MORE CARNAGE

So, as someone who has spent her career in aging, I am calling out to everyone, especially professional in aging – do something. Since the feds appear to be doing little- call your congressman, write a letter to the editor.

BE KIND LIKE RACHEL MADDOW REPORTS LA JEWISH HOME LA WAS

Rachel Maddow suggests calling your local nursing homes and see what they need. Be kind like the LA Jewish Home was to a smaller nursing home LA Brier Oaks. They wanted to test their residents and had no tests and the larger LA Jewish Home had tests and shared them with the smaller as a good neighbor. What they found was ravaging but it also showed caring and generosity. Care and be generous and show the helpless elders in nursing homes in your town you are opposed to -nursing home being prisons or concentration camps.