Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Are You Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees?

December 12, 2022

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 Are You Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees?

Giving holiday thanks to your employees for their work during the holidays is key to being a good employer. Christmas and Hannakka are coming up when we offer thanks to our friends, loved ones, and family. But what about thanking your employees this holiday month? How will you thank your employees, the very people that power your business and profit and may be on call for you right now on New Year?

A holiday party  after hours catered  or  just  ordering pizza plus buying bottles of wine, and nonalcoholic beverages then having a white elephant exchange  hat can be fun and affordable

But if that is not in your plan here are Ideas for inexpensive but really appreciated gifts to thank your employees – this holiday season. Consider gift cards to grocery stores or department stores, or a gift certificate from Amazon all given with a nice personal handwritten note.

Thank Your Staff

How To Thank Staff  All Year

1. Thank your staff all year long 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 celebrate what the employees do for your business.

2. Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees could be sending a handwritten thank-you note to thank your employees, to each staff member during the year applauding something they did. Be grateful by thanking your staff for 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. Thank your staff by naming an employee of the month, each month in your newsletter with their picture. Give them a gift GCM-pix-3.jpgto tell them you are grateful for their hard work. Create a formal letter recognizing your employee’s achievement. Sign it and use the company’s seal to give the letter something extra. To thank your employees right, frame it too.

4. Giving holidays thanks to your employees,  if you do feel safe, could be hosting an in-person party,If you do not feel it is covid safe, try a virtual employee holiday party and mail gifts ahead of time to all employees for being such excellent care managers all year. If it is late now so try New Year.

5. When the COVID level in your area is safe enough to gather,  thank your employees, plan employee picnics, birthday parties, and anniversary parties to thank them publicly throughout the year.

6. B.J Curry- Spitler, one of the first and I might say the greatest care managers, founded Age Concerns in San Diego in 1982. and knew how to be grateful to her staff. She was a master at thanking her staff.  To thank her employees, she gave gifts of massages to her care managers. A brilliant gift, a massage recognizes the tough emotional work that care managers do and their need to take care of themselves- which you as their employer are doing

 

This winter 90% of those who die of Covid will be over 65 . January is the deadliest month in the U.S. according to an analysis of the CDC Wonder database.

Understand End of Life this winter

Sign -up for my Upcoming Free Webinar Deliver a Good End of Life 9 Steps to Death &Dying

Jan 24, 2023, 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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 Description

Deliver a Good End of Life- 9 Steps to Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

Deliver a Good End of Life

Serve Your Client until Death Do You Part
Join me on January 24 2023 and learn why End of Life Services re a perfect new service for care managers

Deliver a Good End of Life

Learn to guide the patient/family through the five stages of death. Understand how to help clients be active participants in their care. Give the family caregivers tools to manage care. Find out how to provide family-centered care to caregivers and families. Learn to choose the right support services for the client through all stages of death.
Introduce Hospice and Palliative care to the client earlier and work with their team.
Find out how to use COVID -19 family coaching for GCM. Discover the role of Death Doula at end of life.

Time

Jan 24, 2023, 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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Sign -Up Even if you cannot attend & receive the recording the next day 

 

     

 

     

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Black Aging Family, Black Entrepreneur, Black Entrepreneur RB, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black entrepreneurs, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Black RN, Black Travel Nurses, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional families, Cut-Off, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Dysfunctional Family System, Families, GCM Webinar, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Holiday on call, Holiday season, News, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, on-call staff, Thanking staff, Thanksgiving, THANKSGIVING BLOG, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: aging family, aging family Christmas, aging life care manager, Aging Mom on Christmas, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, Christmas, eldercare, GCM on call, geriatric care manager, Holiday Staff thank you, Holidays calls to GCM's, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, staff on call on Christmas, start-up eldercare, Thank employees, Thank Staff all year, Thank You, thanking staff on Christmas, Thanks staff

Best Tool to Give the Family Holiday Hope

November 14, 2022

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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

How to Help Avoid a Cat and Dog fight Among the Dysfunctional Family On Holidays

November 1, 2022

cat-dog-fight.jpg

Sparring Cats and Dogs AKA Siblings

Learn how to calm the chaos of the dysfunctional family on the holiday.  During the coming holiday season, especially after some liquid cheer, sour step-parents, angry step-siblings, and mid-life adult kids who grew -up in a dysfunctional family can spin into sparring cats and dogs with teeth bared at Thanksgiving Hannaka, Christmas dinner. Sign -up for my  holiday webinar

 Why Their Stocking is Full of Coal

As if COVID has not made the holidays hard enough for family gatherings, the ordinary

 

aging processes are made far tougher when a family has a history of dysfunction. The holidays are red meat for a dysfunctional family. Aging professionals, like geriatric care managers, have their greatest challenges in working with these “difficult” families.

Dysfunctional families are not able to organize themselves

Dysfunctional Familiy on the holidays

They effectively face gut-wrenching eldercare challenges and crises. These families are under more stress as they move from long-established roles into uncharted territory. the dysfunctional family on holidays like Thanksgiving can face an emotional detonation then an explosion with siblings laying into each other not the turkey.

 Why Cut-OFF Ruins the Celebration 4The Dysfunctional family on holidays

The dysfunctional family on the holidays faces shunning or cutoff. What if adult kids “ cut off” their Dad years ago and now he had a severe stroke- what do they do when caught between I hate you and now I love you. One sibling has taken over Mom or Dad’s care and her/his dysfunctional midlife adult siblings just don’t want her to do this. It only takes a few drinks at dinner  and snarky remarks start a fracas that leads to cut-off, which leads to them not sharing in Mom’s care, overloading the sibling caregiver, and endangering Mom’s care, through this shunning.

 

Now that the holidays are soon arriving – they have the same attitude about attending the family Thanksgiving dinner.

 

 

Dysfunctional family on holidays

SIGN UP FOR MY FREE HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

 

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

 Learn how to create marketing to alert adult children you are there

  • Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers
  • Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
  • Pre-Holiday e-newsletters, podcasts, speakers bureau, blogs-to market

Learn clinical skills to covert and tools to serve frantic adult children and their declining, resistant parents and the dysfunctional family on the holiday

  • How to sell services to desperate post-holiday callers from Normal dysfunctional & long-distance family
  • How to use tools to contain sibling holiday chaos & arrange care in festive family fright
  • How to move the family to New Year’s stability
  • 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 the dysfunctional family or nearly normal family during the holidays
  • Featuring

 Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management        

 

 

  • Dysfunctional family on holidays

 

 

SIGN UP FOR MY FREE HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Filed Under: ADULT SIBling, Aging, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, black care manager, black concieirge nurse, black concierge care manager, black concierge RN, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Blog, Care Management Inquiry Call, care manager, case manager, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, estranged siblings, Families, GCM Sales, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday Rush Technology, Holiday season, Holiday Sibling Rivalry, Holiday Social Media, Holiday Webinar, Holidays, inquiry call, Long Distance Care, Long Distance Care Holidays, Long distance caregiver, Marketing during Holidays, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, POST HOLIDAY CALLS, POST HOLIDAY SEASON, SIBLING, sibling rivalry, Sibling Strife Holidays, Sibling Strife Thanksgiving, Siblings, Social Media Holidays, social media marketing, technology for long distance care, Telehealth with GCM, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving & dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving and COVID, THANKSGIVING BLOG, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgiving Safe Visits to Grandma, Therapist Specializing in Aging, Webinar Tagged With: aging dysfunctional family, aging family, aging life care manager, aging life care on holidays, aging parent care, aging parent Thanksgiving, alcohol on the holidays, black aging family, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black geriatric care managers, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, care manager, case manager, COVID THANKSGIVING VISIT, danger signs for holiday visit, drunken holiday, dysfunctional family on the holiday, dysfuntional family, Dysfuntional family on holidays, GRANDMA VISIT THANKSGIVING, Holiday sibling rivalry, Holidays Crisis in aging family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, post holiday parent care, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Webinar, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving with midlife siblings

Are You Ready for Thanksgiving Calls From Stressed Long Distance Caregivers ?

October 27, 2022

 

Long Distance Caregivers stressed by distance

Long Distance Caregivers Stressed by Distance

Stressed Long Distance Caregiver

Stressed long-distance caregivers are getting ready for holiday travel. So care managers -get ready for the holiday rush -when these long-distance caregivers call you. Many have often been flying or driving to both visit and care for aging family members for a while and have been exhausted for a long time. These usually understand that their parents are deteriorating with age and are savvy enough to have researched options and already found you on the web ( a reason to have a great website).

 

 

The Holiday Push Over The Edge

Stressed Long Distance caregiver

When Long distance family gathers with aging parents on Thanksgiving and everyone sees problems with an older person- the long-distance family may agree to call for help.  The brutal stress of the holiday season on top of caring for an aging parent long-distance may push the long-distance care providers over the edge to join the Holiday Rush for care and call you. Are you ready for that holiday rush??

Signs That a Parent Needs Care

Unpaid bills litter Dad’s desk. He refuses to go to church when he was a devoted churchgoer all his life.

Stressed  Long Distance caregiver

He’s drinking too much at the local pub. When the daughter puts the post-turkey leftovers in the refrigerator she finds moldy food on every shelf. When asked about the bills and the moldy food, Dad gets really angry at them when he was an easygoing guy all his life. This is the holiday push where they pick up the phone and scream  911 to a care manager.

Call made to 911- to the GCM from stressed long-distance providers

Stressed Long Distance caregiver

 

At that point, the daughter may feel panicked by holiday push and pull out her phone and call an aging life or geriatric care manager because she cannot fly home without getting help. Are you ready for these desperate calls you will be in this holiday rush?

You -Care Manager Gets Call  From Stressed long distance care providers- Are You Ready?

Give frantic adult children hope when they frantically call this holiday.

So be prepared for their inquiry and know the needs of long-distance caregivers plus the resources in your area you can use in this holiday rush with long-distance caregivers when they call you. Do not give away the store in your call but let

 

them know that you are an expert in the needs of long-distance care providers and an ace navigator in your area that can find services and choices that are perfect to end their holiday pu

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

 

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
    Get ready for the holiday rush

  • 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
  • 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        

 

  • Find Out More 

  • Featuring Speaker

 Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

SIGN UP FOR MY NEWEST WEBINAR. 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, Covid Holiday Remote Visit, COVID Webinar, COVID-19 & Care Management, Covid-19 and GCM SERVICES, COVID-19 Webinar, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Holiday Sibling Rivalry, Holidays, HolidaySeason and COVID, Long Distance Care, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving & dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving and COVID, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgiving Safe Visits to Grandma, Thanksgving visits during COVID Tagged With: aging family Thanksgiving, aging life care manager, aging life inquiry, aging life or geriatric care manager, care manager, case manager, check list for holiday visit, COVID Driving to Thanksgiving, COVID THANKSGIVING VISIT, COVID VIRTUAL THANKSGIVING VISIT, geriatric care manager, long distance care provider, long distance family on holiday, nurse care manager, Thanksgiving COVID Travel, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family

Can’t See Aging Mom Easter, Passover-7 Ways to Make Her Feel U Are There

April 12, 2022

Can’t see Aging Mom on Easter or Passover

Can’t See Your Mom on Easter or Passover – Long Distance?

Can’t See your Mom on Passover or Easter as you are a long-distance care provider, what’s the best way to keep in touch with the long-distance elder if you can’t visit on coming  Passover or Easter.

Easy Low-Touch Non-Tech Ideas

photo of father and boy coloring Easter egg together as Can’t see Aging Mom on Easter or Passover

Use low touch—the old-fashioned communication elders grew up – the Post Office and telephone. If you can’t see Mom or Easter or Passover, send a card with a photo of your kids dying easter eggs. Older people came from a generation where cards and mail were really meaningful. It is easy and really touches elders who love opening the little personal mail they get, especially from family. These heritage links are a great way to support a far away elder. Non-tech, they cause no stress on their part. Even we boomers who walk haltingly through the tech world of 40 characters forget that connecting with a stamp or a call is so familiar to an older person. Plus you give that feeling of warmth they always got when they  “ opened” “ or “ answered” saw a real photo -something real (not virtual); Try having the whole family send a card even kids. A flooded mailbox on Easter or Passover fills their heart.

Let Mom or Dad Smell The Affection. Send Passover Easter in a box

Can’t see Mom or Dad on Passover or Easter but Dad or Mom, are not religious, mail holiday care packages —bake or buy cookies or small loaves of bread. Bake it with your children and send samples along with actual photos of everyone baking in the kitchen or buying treats.  Even if they crumble a bit, elders will smell the affection.

Easy Option -Holiday in a Box

Can’t see Mom on Passover or Easter, send a “ holiday in a box. Easter and Passover are coming up. Send a basket of kids’ drawings, candy, nuts, home-baked or purchased Easter Bread or cookies or Matzah that reflects the holiday celebration plus a gift certificate for an Easter brunch or dinner with a friend.  Give Mom joy in a simple package. For an extra special surprise, arrange an invitation to a Passover or Easter dinner with a friend or through your parents’ synagogue or church

Passover in a Box

For those adult children who are time-deprived, and can’t see Mom over the holidays, order Passover in a box on Amazon if you have little time and want to send something special. The same goes with Easter in a box with delicious Easter cookies.

A Little Help From Aging Parents Friends

Can’t see Aging Mom on Easter or Passover

Skip that holiday in a box, if you can’t see Mom on Passover or Easter you can create a circle of care . Get the app  Lots of Helping Hands through neighbors, friends, people in your elder’s place of worship, or a group they belong to. Then you can ask if they can arrange to include your older relative or friend in the Easter brunch, egg hunt or Passover meal. You will then have an entire support team your elder with a whole circle of support in the future and not feel so alone.

 

Make Aging Tech for Holiday Gift

Send Passover Easter in a box

Send a high-tech gift, if you can’t see Mom or Dad over Easter or Passover. Send a high-tech device that your loved one can really use and figure out. I just ordered the Esky Wireless Locator because I keep misplacing my glasses.

How Care Managers Help Get to Long Distance CarProviders

Care Managers can do lots of things for a family member who is long-distance and can’t see Mom on Easter or Passover. Julie Menack in her chapter “Long Distance Care Providers” in my book Care Managers Working With the Aging Family lists tasks long-distance care providers can do to make their own lives and their long-distance loved ones saner, sounder, and happier

Find a Care Manager Through Aging Life

Marketing Phrases for Concierge Care Clients

 

If you want to investigate an Aging Life geriatric care manager in your parent’s own town find a professional who can help you do all this so you can remain a son or daughter and a less stressed caregiver.

Do You Know The Best Phrases To Attract VIP Care Management Clients?

Filed Under: Aging Parent Pain, ALCA business, ALCA Concierge, Easter, Easter gifts Mom, Edder Lonliness, Elder Lanliness, Grandchild gifts for grandma, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday Rush Technology, Holiday season, isolation, Loneliness, Long Distance Care, Long Distance Care technology, Long distance caregiver, long distance caregiver burnout, Long distance family impostion, Long Distance Gift Easter, Long distance gift Passover, Long Distance Safety Travel COVID, Long Distance travel Holidays, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Passover, Passover Gift Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging life or geriatric care manager, case manager, Easter, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Gifts for Easter 0r Passover, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays with aging parents, long distance caregiver, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Passover, Reminiscence on the Holidays

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