Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Close the GCM or ALCA Sale to Assisted Living With Benefits not Features

February 11, 2022

Marketing Tactics – Use Benefits 

ALCA members need to sell the benefits of Geriatric Care Management to assisted living. Care managers are perfect professionals to help assisted living residents if they have just moved in, are unhappy with the move, not participating in activities isolating or general when they are not thriving in the resident community.

Marketing care management to ALF’s takes some particular marketing tactics 

 

 

Although it might seem counterintuitive, consumers rarely want to buy things for the sake of buying them – they want what they purchase to solve their problems.

To borrow from the example of an umbrella, features of this  umbrella might be its unbreakable spokes or wind-resistant construction – but  the benefit  is staying dry even in strong winds that might break lesser umbrellas. The benefit of staying dry in strong winds that break other umbrellas – this make the sale.

Clients who purchase home care or care management want to buy benefits – what your product or service can do for them.

GCM Benefits To Assisted Living 

Let’s take a third-party. Care Managers often market to Assisted Living. ALF Directors want to hear how your ALCA or GCM  agency is going to help the Assisted Living site. Of course, you can describe your agency features, price, training of staff, gold standard service. However, benefits are what make the sale and keep the Assisted Living dry not flooded by the rain.

But here are some benefits you can offer to Assisted Living when you are seeking referrals and you have a service  for residents that involves Quality Of Life   

YOUR GCM ALCA AGENCIES BENEFITS

The problem: Assisted Living does not want residents to move out. Most facilities are strictly non-medical and do not have one to one companion and geriatric care management services. Your  geriatric care management agency can solve that problem through the benefits of ALCA or geriatric care management.

 

The assisted living and retirement community population sometimes have clients with needs that cannot be met with their nonmedical, non-one-on-one support services, (usually just an activities director)

  • You will help facility with residents who are not adjusting to the facility or considering moving by engaging them in activities that will enhance the quality of their life, SO WHAT so they remain in the facility
  • You will help residents not engaging in activities to participate in the ALF’s activities program or outside activities and socialization program through a quality of life assessment & companion, SO WHAT so they do not want to move out of the facility
  • You will engage with new residents who are just adjusting both to the facility and their move, to engage in socialization and activity programs. You can help them make friends & engage in outside activities through a quality of life assessment and companion, SO WHAT so they do not consider moving out
  • You will make monthly monitoring visits to make sure Companion is meeting all the client’s needs, keep in touch with the family and facility with frequent e-mails, texts or telephone updates plus sending a monthly report SO WHAT so everyone is on the same page through your great communication skills.

So, selling the benefits to the third party, who will refer your agency to families of residents who are struggling, is a much more potent selling point that features your agency. 

SIGN UP FOR MY FREE WEBINAR   

When: March 15 2022
2 PM-3:30 PM PST
Learn
 

A feature is a fact    A benefit tells your customer the advantages of those facts   

 

Take Advantage of One Time Low Offers on Products

You will learn

The difference between selling features vs benefits

You will learn how to sell the benefits of your services for each 3rd party you  serve

How Benefits make your sale to wealth managers, elder law attorneys, and concierge physicians to get referrals for new clients

The Benefits that make you5 sale to upscale Assisted Living, accountants, financial planners, Hospice

Step by Step how to set up meetings with 3rd parties to make the sale

Even if you cannot attend you will get the recording of the webinar the next day if you sign up

SIGN UP 

 

 

 

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What are 8 Spiritual Quality Of Life Activities for Elders During the Holidays ?

December 6, 2021

Spirituality Helps Elder Quality of Life Skyrocket  With on Holidays

Spirituality helps elders’ quality of life. As you age, spirituality can matter more. Now that we are entering a season of high spiritual celebrations like Christmas, Hanukkah, Orthodox Christmas, Feast day – Our

Lady of Guadalupe- this is the most important season to involve elders who wish to be in spiritual communities. Religious communities offer socialization thus the quality of life to so many elders and can return joy to their lives.So you must learn how to find an elder’s holiday joy.

 

Religion Comes in a Filing Cabinet

The idea that spirituality helps elders’ quality of life was taught to me by Leonie Nowitz, a geriatric care manager who has a deep interest in spirituality and writes about it often, once told me to look at spirituality as a question  ” What is this all about”. As we age this question becomes primal, as we face death coming at a rapid pace. We wonder- do I go to heaven, to hell, or just energy or dust. Will I meet angels- my wife in heaven.?

Ms. Nowitz said that when you define religion, look at it as a filing cabinet with each drawer is a religion with it’s an answer to spirituality  ” “What Is this all About”. There is one for Jews, Protestants, Hindu’s Muslims, Quakers, The Environment- all religions and belief systems.

 

How to Find An Elder’s Holiday Joy

Learning how to find an elder’s holiday joy, is a key skill for care managers. One assessment care managers can do is a Quality of Life assessment to find out how and where joy can be found again.  If spirituality is something that would increase an elders’ quality of life, here are some activities that you may suggest to an older client or their family, especially on holidays when places of worship have their most spectacular music, smells, and bells, and pageantry.

Spiritual Quality of Life Activities During Holidays

  1. If an older person appears isolated and is unable to attend their place of worship, especially on holidays, because of not driving or disability, and they wish to still join a congregation, contact the head of the religious group and ask if members could transport him or if they have a van service or arrange for members to transport them to services. If they cannot get out ask if the spiritual leader or congregation members would make home visits.
  2. If an older person is not now a part of a religious group but what once was and has some interest in returning, holidays are the best times to reconnect. Contact the head of the religious group and ask him/her to make a home visit and the care manager follow up with transportation arrangements to holiday services if yes.
  3. If an older client has had a recent close relative or friend die and wishes to return to a spiritual group she knew before, connect them, with the congregation they are familiar with for solace or grieving.
  4. If an older person moves to a new area and is part of a religious group connect them to the same religion and place of worship in the new town and arrange transportation  to holiday services and a new member to greet them
  5. If an older person has dementia if possible reconnect him or her with his spiritual background through familiar prayer, music, etc.  
  6. If an elder has dementia and can attend services without being disruptive, arrange for a caregiver to take them as they can still be drawn in  by the ” Smells and Bells’
  7. If you have a homebound client who wishes to return to a religious group, reconnect them by arranging, in their,  holiday spiritual music, religious icons (a rosary or image, for example), readings from a sacred text about their own religion on Hannakka or Christmas, watching a service on television, listening to one on the radio or via computer.
  8. Decorate their room with holiday decoration that represents their own religious holiday like a Menorah, Christmas tree, a nativity scene, etc.

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Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, case manager, Dementia Activities, Dementia and Spirituality, elder care manager, Families, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Quality of Life, Spiritual Quality of Life Tagged With: aging life care manager, assessing for quality of life, care manager, case manager, demential and spirituality, geriatric care manager, nurse care manager, spirital assessment, spiritual assessment, spiritual supports in aging, spirituality in aging

How Storytelling Can Give Elders A Happier Family Thanksgiving

November 22, 2021

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

 

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 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.

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Sign Up for My New Years Webinar 

11 Clinical Steps to Work with Dysfunctional Families-Post Holidays –

Thursday, January 6, 2:00 PM 3:30 PM Pacific 

 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 stockings.

 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 the 5 Clinical Tools – you need – to solve these problems with your clients

 

Learn Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families

Sign -Up Now so even if You Cannot Attend You Get the recording 

 Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel  Geriatric Care 1

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Black Aging Family, Black Entrepreneur, Black Entrepreneur RB, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black entrepreneurs, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Black geriatric care managers, Black RN, Black Travel Nurses, care manager, 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, 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

Serve Reminiscence for Elders Along With Hotdogs on Memorial Day

May 27, 2021

Reminiscence isn’t new. Before the printing press, storytellers and bards were how history was recorded-

 

Oral storytellers gave us the Odyssey and other valiant tales.Ulysses and Penelope may be coming to your Memorial Day Barbecue this coming weekend.

V

But storytelling only works if the teller remembers the lines. Family history has to be captured when the older person still remembers. So holiday events are a perfect time to tap into that font before it flickers.

Tips to Capture Elders Stories

Here are some tips to use if they want to capture these family tales during Memorial Day weekend with aging parents—a perfect time to do this. Use empathetic listening if they can. Make all the messages you are are giving the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting- say, “I want to listen to them.”

Ask questions that prompt the story

But don’t make judgments. If there are going to record the family tale, do it in a way that doesn’t distract or stop the older person from talking.

Start somewhere. If the elder isn’t going to tell stories on his or her own, start the story .

See if they will follow along.” Did you go to Memorial Day parades when you were a kid or march in one after the war ( pick his war).” Did your parents have barbecues to start the summer ?”. “What was it like being drafted into to service ? Where did ou serve?

Music is just next to memory in the brain .

 Alive Inside  and can be used for elders with dementia. So 50’s Rock and Roll, Little Richard , Bill Haley and if they are older the Four Freshman. Play elders music at your event and ask older vets or their wives or widows for stories of the Vietnam War, Korean War or Iraq.

 Two technology tools to help you with Remiscence for your older client

Story Worth    

Story Worth is a legacy building tool that can help families create a book of memories through weekly easy prompts of questions to ask the older person  the create a weekly story about their life resulting in a book after one Year . My daughter gifted it to her Dad and he and the whole family loved the legacy book that was created

 

Quick Voice Recorder to catch the memory on your phone  and used Dictation  to transcribe the memories into written word to print.

Check out my Book Handbook of Geriatric Care Management with more tools for legacy building written by David Lindeman Director Of the Center for Technology at UC Berkeley and Julie Menack of 21 st Care Solutions

CONNECT WITH CATHY CRESS MSW

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Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Alive Inside, Blog, care manager, Dementia & Holidays, Dementia Activities, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Legacy Tools, Memorial Day, Memorial Day and Aging Veterans, Memorial Day Barbecue, Memorial Day with elders, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Quality of Life and Reminicance, Reminiscence Therapy, Retired Veterans, Senior Legacy, Spoiled Holiday Rituals, Story Worth Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, Alive Inside, care manager, case manager, geriatric care manager, Memorial Day barbecue. Music and memory, nurse care manager, oral history, oral history and quality of life, reminicence and elder, Reminicence and geriatric care manager, Reminicence on Memorial Day, Reminicence Therapy, reminiscence, storytelling and elders, StoryWorth

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.images_20130906-154817_1.jpg

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 GunnDadJacket.jpgMSSP.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 doorKali--Bill-Connies-book-.JPG

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

Filed Under: Adult children, Aging, Aging Family, aging family crisis, Aging Life Care Assocaition, Blog, Caregiver Burn Out, caregiver burnout, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, case manager, Coronavirus emergency plan, coronavirus shut down, Covid 19, Covid-19 Nursing Home, Dementia Activities, elder care manager, Families, geriatric care manager, MSSP cuts in California, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, quality of life in senior centers, SNF death COVID-19 Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, barrier to caregiver assessment, California Budget cuts for seniors, california caregiver resource center, caregiver burden, caregiver depression, case manager, Cuts to programs for frail elders, Family Caregiver Alliance, geriatric care manager, MSSP cuts in California, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Trump veto

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