Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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How Storytelling at Thanksgiving Can Give Elders A Happier Family Holiday

November 22, 2022

Want to increase aging parents’ and everyone’s enjoyment at Thanksgiving? Try storytelling at Thanksgiving using elders’ memories.

As an aging professional, you can bring joy to an older person  through reminiscence, storytelling, and oral history for elders

This Thanksgiving, if you really do travel to a family home or grandma’s house, travel safely  If not make the safest choice, stay home and  use Zoom and include your elderly

 

parent. You can do oral history for elders if they can use a computer or have a family member or friend who visits often and who lives nearby and is in their bubble serve and share Thanksgiving dinner at their home and use zoom with them to see other family members on the holiday.

Share Your Thanksgiving Story

If you are at a family member’s holiday dinner and use reminiscence for elders by asking everyone to tell their favorite story about a Thanksgiving dinner. Start with midlife members to get the idea and then ask

 

again parents to share their stories.

Oral history for elders will bring extra thanks to Thanksgiving by learning about an elder’s past and giving them the opportunity to share, which sometimes they do not do in the hubbub of family talking.

  The “telling ” also means someone documents. That magically gives the elder and a child social interaction and connectedness. Elders vividly recall their past by telling stories from vignettes in their life – especially life in their 20’s, which sparks the richest recall called the “20’s bump”, according to researchers.

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

So try storytelling at  Thanksgiving and it becomes intergenerational. The older person is given a chance to give the larger picture of their life and family history to children and grandchildren or extended family, who may not have heard all the details of their grandparent’s or parent’s life before. My 10 grandchildren have grown up with their now 80-year-old grandfather. telling them exciting stories of when he was a California Highway patrolman. So a dual dose of a higher quality of life for both the older person and the aging family is increased through oral history and reminiscence.

Capture Your Families Past Before It Is Gone

 

 Many midlife adults now do ancestry and regret that they did not ask questions of older family members when they were alive. Capture that past now on this family holiday. An aging professional or a geriatric care manager can suggest family or friends record the Thanksgiving story as oral history using technology like an i Phone or i Pad.

Story Telling at Thanksgiving  with Story Worth

Another great idea to capture reminiscence for elders is giving them StoryWorth. 

 

My daughter sent this gift to her Dad and both he and I love it. Each week  StoryWorth sends a question to my husband that prompts him to write about his past. He writes his reminiscence out longhand and I easily use the dictation on my phone and email his story to Story Worth.

At the end of the year, my daughter will order a bound book of all the stories- a whole collection of memories, an oral history of an elder father that she might never think to ask and will be saved for her and her children to pass on family history. I will order a copy for all her three siblings. Equally important, my husband, really enjoyed writing about his past and the prompts have brought many vivid memories back to him.

Sweet grandmother holding a beautifully cooked turkey dinner.

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Benefits of Reminiscence, Black Aging Family, black care manager, black concieirge nurse, black concierge care manager, black concierge RN, Black Entrepreneur, Black Entrepreneur RB, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black entrepreneurs, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Black geriatric care managers, Black RN, black RN care manager, black social worker, black travel nurse, Black Travel Nurses, Black Travel RN, care management business, care manager, caregiver coaching, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, case manager, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional families, Concierge aging clients, Coronavirus safety elders, COVID -19 Safety, COVID & HOLIDAY SEASON, Covid 19 Webinar, Dementia Activities, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Dysfunctional Family Inquiry, elder care manager, Elder Reminicence on Thanksgiving, Emotional Quality of Life, Families, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long Distance Safety Travel COVID, Long Distance travel Holidays, New Years, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Oral History, Quality of Life, quality of life -COVID-19, Quality of Life and Reminicance, Quality of Life and Thanksgiving, Quality of Life for elders, quality of life in senior centers, Quality of Life with Dementia, Reminicence on Thanksgiving, Reminicence with elders, Reminiscence Therapy, Remote Thanksgiving Family Visit, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgiving Safe Visits to Grandma, Thanksgiving with COVID, Thanksgving visits during COVID, Therapist Specializing in Aging, Webinar Tagged With: aging family, aging family Thanksgiving, aging life care manager, aging parent, aging parent care, aging parent Thanksgiving, aging technology, ancrestory.com, assessing for quality of life, black aging family, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black caregivers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black Heirlooms, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black RN's, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, care manager, care plan, care plan interventions, case manager, COVID THANKSGIVING VISIT, COVID VIRTUAL THANKSGIVING VISIT, family caregivers, Family Caregivers using technology, genealogy, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, geritaric care manager, grandfather, grandmothers, grandparents, increasing quality of life, LCSW, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, oral history, oral history and quality of life, oral history and You Tube, parent care, Quality of Life, quality of life assessment, reminicence and elder, reminisicsence technology, story telling elders, storytelling and elders, technology for caregivers, Thanksgiving Webinar, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving with midlife siblings, You Tube, You Tube and storytelling

Best Tool to Give the Family Holiday Hope

November 14, 2022

images_20141216-184443_1.jpg

 

Hope is the Best Tool on the Holidays !

How do you give the family Holiday Hope? 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 in 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.  

Upset

Social isolation, which is experienced by some caregivers, is also predictive of increased alcohol use.

Low angle

How do you Give the Family Holiday Hope? 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 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

To give the family holiday hope the use of Self is perhaps the most powerful tool for geriatric care managers. The use of Self provides families with guarded optimism. GCMs 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, 

confidentiality, consistency, and support.

Finally, give the family holiday hope by 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

Give the Family Holiday Hope

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

Give the Family Holiday Hope

Get Ready for the Holiday Rush

WEDNESDAY, November 16th, 2022, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

 Learn how to create!

  • Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers
  • Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
  • Pre-Holiday Marketing to help you sign up families who might face a serious decline in aging parents
  • How to sell services to desperate post-holiday callers from Normal dysfunctional & long-distance family
  • How to use tools to contain holiday chaos & arrange care in festive family fright
  • How to move the family to New Year’s stability
  • Give the Family Holiday Hope
  • Position Your Agency ahead of Care Managers who do not have great pre-holiday marketing campaigns and lack the clinical skills how to work with Adult Children and families during the chaotic aging family holiday visit when adult kids find their aging parents need care
  • Featuring

 Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management        

 

SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL GERIATRIC CARE 1

Filed Under: Aging Alcohol Abuse, caregiver, Caregiver Burn Out, caregiver burnout, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Loneliness, Long distance caregiver, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, alcohol on the holidays, Alcolhol abuse in the elderly, care manager, case manager, dysfunctional family, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays with aging parents, My Dysfunctional Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Use of Self

What Type of Conceirge Care Providers Do You Recruit for Concierge Clients?

May 2, 2022

Medicare does not fund long term care

Medicare Does Not Fund Long Term Care

Concierge Clients, wanting concierge care providers, are sadly the only clients of GCM or ALCA experts because of income inequity in the US and the fact that Medicare does not cover long-term care,  like home care and geriatric care management.

You Are Only As Strong As Your Weakest Link Especially With Concierge Clients!

 You must serve the top 10%  of aging Americans because those clients make your ALCA business or GCM  business make money and thrive. But to deliver the gold standard services that concierge care demands, let’s take the weakest link in your business- your care staff. You are only as strong as your weakest link these concierge care providers. These incredibly important employees’ skills will measure how concierge clients really rate you.

First and foremost to serve Concierge clients you need highly skilled concierge care providers with a CNA background or years of experience. Older generations, especially entitled clients, are likely to be

less trustful of an individual with numerous visible tattoos and a Mohawk. They would rather have their concierge care providers be a clean-cut employee wearing a uniform. You want background-checked employees with tolerant of demanding clients and willing to be servile and assertive and know when to use either.

Concierge Care Providers for Concierge Clients Should Be:

Concierge Care Provider
  • WELL-GROOMED
  • WELL DRESSED
  • SERVILE
  • GOOD COOK
  • GOOD TABLE SETTERS
  • WILLING TO BE CONFIDANTE but under GCM supervision 

 

Concierge caregiver

For COMPANION CARE hire 

  • Sophisticated employee
  • Can Order Opera theater tickets
  • Accompany to events
  • Drivers Licence

    GCM has to Set Boundaries with concierge clients:

  • Concierge care providers can cook French Cuisine but if the client“Heavy Care-priority -must have transfer skills and CNA or HHA skills not cooking skills
  • Cannot often get a gourmet cook who changes diapers
  • Cannot have careprovider looks like a model who uses Hoyer lift

CONCIERGE Clients-NON-medical

CAREGIVER’S SAMPLE to-do list

  • Doing grocery shopping or grocery home delivery
  • Post office run
  • Pet-care
  • Waiting in line at the DMV
  • Taking the car for Car repairs, oil change, car wash
  • Event planning- GCM
  • Gift-buying
  • Plant care
  • Picking up dry cleaning
  • Running miscellaneous errands
  • Making travel arrangements
  • Mail pickup
  • chef services
  • Dinner reservations
  • What Cannot do
  • Performing bank transactions, such as depositing or withdrawing money, or shopping for the client without pre-arranged payment through the store could pose a liability
  • Assist with finances, online banking, bill paying/tracking
  • pickup of prescription medications -Only GCM to do because of medication abuse and liability
  • Join me in my newest FREE Webinar

    Free Webinar To Find Concierge Clients

     

  • How to Find Concierge Clients Who Can Afford You

  • WHEN  Tuesday, May 17th, 2022

    WHAT TIME_2 PM-3:30 PM Pacific Standard Time

    What we will cover

    • Why only the top 10% can afford private pay care management.
    • Who are the surprising Retired VIP Clients?
    • Who Are the 5 types of VIP/Concierge Clients? 
    • Sales Using Benefits Not Features to ALCA -GCM 3rd PARTIES
    • Understand how to find VIP Concierge Clients Do hot mapping & Market Studies
    • How to Use Free Public Relations ( PR) to Find Adult Children of VIP Clients
    • How to create or revise a Concierge Geriatric Care Management Strategic Marketing Plan

    SIGN UP

    Learn how to maintain  Concierge Clients

     

    REGISTER NOW

    Learn how to keep Concierge Clients

     

     

     

     

     

  • Young woman hugging her mother or grandmother and looking at camera.
       

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, caregiver, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, case manager, Concierge caregivers, elder care manager, Families, FREE MARKETING WEBINAR, FREE WEBINAR, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care management emergency proceduress, geriatric care manager, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Marketing Home Care, marketing to the top 10$, marketing to upper 10%, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Nursing home abuse, paid caregiver, paid caregiver for concierge client, Private Duty Home Care, Webinar Tagged With: aging concierge Clinets, aging life and geraitric care manager, case manager, Certified Senior Advisors, Concierge care givers, concierge care providers, concierge clients, Concierge Home Care, entiled older clients, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, recruit care provders, supervision of in home care staff, training in home care staff

Best Tool for Dysfunctional Family on Holidays- Hope

December 7, 2021

 

Give Families Hope the Best Tool Post the Holidays

Give the family Hope, after Christmas and Hannaka their older loved ones, especially in the dysfunctional family, could be drinking or numbing themselves from the pain of aging. Adult children can also 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 whole family transform to change? 

 

It’s actually simple –but loaded with skill- give the family 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 Use of Self as a Power Care Manager Tool

Care managers  learning 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, confidentiality, consistency, and support.

Finally, GCM’s offer our clients a model of perseverance. By giving 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  

11 Vital Clinical Tools For Desperate Families Post-Holidays

             Thursday, Jan 6, 2022, 02:00 PM Pacific Time (the US and Canada)

 

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

 Join me Post-holiday and learn how to come to clinically rescue concierge dysfunctional families who found coal in their stockings through the use of self.     

 

 

 

 

Learn how to

Road sign message – Change just ahead

  • Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders
  • Master 11Vital Clinical Tools you to solve client problems
  • Implement Use of Self
  • Take Six Clinical Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
  • Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist

 SIGN UP NOW

 

SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL GERIATRIC CARE 1

Filed Under: Aging Alcohol Abuse, caregiver, Caregiver Burn Out, caregiver burnout, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Loneliness, Long distance caregiver, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, alcohol on the holidays, Alcolhol abuse in the elderly, care manager, case manager, dysfunctional family, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays with aging parents, My Dysfunctional Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Use of Self

Why are Care Providers for Clients So Hard to Find ?

September 8, 2021

Home care aides all over the US are AWOL. Care Management, home care agencies, nursing homes are severely understaffed and cannot find enough caregivers to staff cases for shifts. Why?

Disorganization of Home Care Industry

Staffing shortages have frustrated the home care and care management industry for

decades, according to Paula Hahn author of the New old Aging blog for the New York Times. . There is no national recruiting or training program for this huge industry.The home care industry has always been a hodgepodge of for-profit companies and chains, nonprofit programs and publicly funded care through Medicaid, all operating under a confusing welter of state and federal regulations, plus an uncharted “gray market” of clients who avoid agencies and hire privately. But Covid-19 has intensified the problem.

“I’ve never heard such frustration over finding workers, and I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” said Vicki Hoak, executive director of the Home Care Association of America, whose 4,000-member agencies collectively employ about 500,000 people. 

Bureau of Labor Predicted this in 2020 -Pre-COVID

This was foreseen and was by the Bureau of Labor statistics. They predicted in 2020 that the long-term care sector would need to fill an additional 6.2 million direct care job openings between 2019 and 2029 as workers leave the field for a new occupation or leave the labor force altogether due to retirement, disability, or some other reasons. Combining these departures and new jobs, they projected a 7.4 million total direct care job openings in the decade ahead 

Mammoth Growth in # of Seniors Who Want to Age

in Place

The bigger problem is the growing need for home care. Each day 10,000 seniors turn 65

in the US and the number of older adults will more than double over the next several decades to top 88 million people and represent over 20 percent of the population by 2050. . The majority want to age in their home and need home care, where today there are not enough home care workers to fill those jobs.

More $ Spent on Home Care than Nursing Homes

2015, was the first time nationally that more money was spent on home care than nursing home care. We’ve seen a culture and financing shift toward home and community-based care.”
Covid -19 now the Delta variant has wreaked more chaos into the home care market. Home care workers are mainly women and had to stay home with their children when school closed down. They were also hot hard by COVID themselves, working with seniors before a vaccine was developed.

Solutions to the National loss of caregivers

There are many other factors  the loss of care providers and great solutions offered by Leading Age a national non profit for aging and home care.

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, ALCA COVID-19 Crisis, Biden's Caregiver Infastucure Paln, Black Entrepreneur, Black Entrepreneur RB, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Black RN, Black Travel RN, care economy, Care Infastructure, Care Infrastructure, caregiver infrastructure, Caregiver living wage, Caregiver low salary, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, Caregivers contracting COVId, Covid-19 and GCM SERVICES, Essential Workers deaths, Expanding Medicare to Home Care, GCM COVID 19 Crisis, geriatric care management emergency proceduress, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Home Care Covid Safety, National Caregiver Loss, National Caregiver need, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, PPE and Essential Workers, private duty homecare agency Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, black aging family, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black RN's, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, Bureau of Labor prediction shortagen, care manager, caregiver low wage salary, caregiver training, Careprovider shortage, COVID exposure of caregivers, Covid-19 and caregivers, geriatric care manager, homecare crisis, Homecare Industry, Homecare industry disorganization, Leading Age, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, problem recruiting caregivers, recruiting caregiver, Recruiting caregivers, Solution to National caregiver shortage, unionization of caregivers, US caregiver shortage, Women of color caregivers

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