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

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- Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist
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Make a Plan to Help Aging Parents Cannot Celebrate Holidays Together

December 16, 2020

HOLIDAY GATHERING WITH AGING PARENTS NOT SAFE

Dr. Michael Osterholm, Disease Expert U of Minnesota has warned against gathering in person with elder family members on the Holidays
“We need somebody to start to articulate, ‘What is our long-term plan? How are we going to get there? Why are we asking people to sacrifice distancing? Why are we telling

people if you really love your family, you won’t go home for Christmas and end up infecting mom or dad or grandpa and grandma.’ We don’t have that storytelling going on right now, and that’s every bit as important as the science itself,”

NEED LONG TERM PLAN STARTING NOW

So adult children need to start making a long-term plan. What are they going to say to their aging parents to convey they do not want to infect or even expose them to covid-19 so you cannot celebrate the holidays together? They cannot come to your home for the festivities and grandma and grandpa cannot go to theirs.

This takes, as Osterholm suggested

creating a story and learning how to tell stories if you do not already know.

HOW TO TELL A STORY

Vaile Wright, senior director for health care innovation at the American Psychological Association. suggests starting the story by explaining how much you care about your family“I feel it’s in my family’s best interests to be more strict, so we’re not going to travel for Christmas.” This type of language, she said, makes the other person less defensive, since it doesn’t come across as “You aren’t doing the right thing so I can’t come to visit.”

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4 Ways to Keep Family COVID-safe if you go Home for Christmas

December 14, 2020

4 Ways to Keep Family Safe if you Travel to Grandma for Christmas

Are you planning to travel over the COVID river and through the mask-free woods to Grandma’s this holiday season?

How can you possibly stay safe? Do you trust your friends and family members to follow the standard safety protocols? Will they wear face coverings, maintain physical distance, and keep surfaces sanitized? Has anyone experienced symptoms recently or had contact with a person who is infected?

Answering these questions before you go may make those already awkward dinner conversations a lot less uncomfortable and may prevent you or aging parents from dying this holiday just as the vaccine is here.

CHECK THE COVID RATE WHERE ARE GOING

NPR has suggestions about traveling on the holiday for adult children who must travel to Grandma’s on the holidays. This includes first checking out the COVID rate in the area where Grandma lives by using NPR’s coronavirus tracker to check this.

CHECK THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE INVITED

The CDC says check out where others are traveling from and the number of people at the gathering among other guidelines from out very maligned by the Trump administration but storied science-based lead healthcare agency.

Travel Off-Peak Time

The Atlantic Magazine, a highly respected and historic magazine recommends, traveling off-peak or traveling a few days earlier, safer for you to drive, stay with Grandma or family, not friends and follow those basic guidelines, masking, distance, etc.

Read ALL & Find Common Thread of Safety

Check them all out and see what is repeated over and over and also what is feasible for you to travel to Grandpa and Grandma, stay safe yourself, keep elders safe and alive next holiday season after the vaccine.

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6 Tech Ideas For Long Distance Care Providers During Covid on Holidays

December 12, 2020

Long-Distance Family Stocking Brimming with Coal

Christmas and Hanukkah are upon us, and many long-distance families will be celebrating remotely with elderly parents due to the nationwide COVID onslaught. Long Distance adult children will make the dangerous journey anyway. Those that do travel may call an Aging Life Care Manager after coming across piles of junk mail, consistently dirty clothes, or a house and/or aging parent that looks like lumpy turkey gravy. Those adult children who stay safely home in the pandemic will need their aging parents to have some technology to communicate with them. Both groups should consider technology as a gift to seniors

Technology Pushes Coal Out of Stocking

Before you get that call, you should read Laurie Orlov’s blog, a fellow Geriatric Care Manager now very well known in the field of aging for her expertise in aging technology. This is what Orlov has to say about long-distance technology in the pandemic. When they call you you might suggest one of the high-tech items Orlov suggests a part of an older family member’s life. Especially during the pandemic. These gero-technologies can help an older parent or relative shelter safely in place, avoid loneliness and isolation through connecting with others, age in place, and improve communicating with loved ones.

Videoconferencing

Videoconferencing is a great way to keep elderly parents connected and less lonely and isolated. It can also be a good tool for adult siblings who live apart to have chats or meetings about Mom or Dad. Free programs like Skype or another parent-friendly plus easy choice Facetime and the built-in webcams on many computers, make this easy on elders. Zoom has become the number one way that families communicate, during the pandemic. . For the holidays, birthdays or even a crisis, it is how we virtually gather now and has a free version.

Amazon Echo Show uses Alexa, by activating Amazon’s voice and can make calls to adult children or anyone, making it easy for seniors to talk to anyone including family. An older standard telephone conference service is still highly rated and still free, as well. Freeconferencecall.com

Med Dispensers

Here is a review of several med dispensers on the market

A device that is very appropriate for elders who have medication abuse problems is Hero Electronic Pill Dispenser

Alexa has a new pill reminder feature

A more modest choice is Electronic Pill Box with Flasing Reminders

Caregiver Video Cameras

Cameras like Google Nest can monitor an individual’s activities of daily living and provide caregivers with direct video feed on a smartphone, tablet app, or the Web to check on the status of a family member.

Monitoring sensors

Wireless systems. Cameras can be viewed remotely from a smartphone or computer. You may be able to get video motion alerts and the ability to pan and zoom

GCM Laurie Orlov at Aging Tech suggests many new 2020 sensor programs among them. Caregiver Smart Solutions

Canary Care. lets you place wireless sensors around the house to monitor the activity of an elderly parent who is declining, while the family is long distance. The information is sent to your Canary Care portal. The sensors are battery powered and the hub uses mobile data to send the information, so no need for a landline or broadband.

TruSense – can alert long distance or even local adult children if a probable fall occurs. An alert is triggered when TruSense detects that your loved one has not moved from high-risk fall areas (such as a stairwell or restroom) in an unusually long time. Other alerts include doors where the older person could wander.

Other Sensor Products

Sensor products can check a number of items within a house: motion patterns, stove on/off status, carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide levels, air quality, and presence of smoke or fire. They can also lock doors and control other items in the home remotely.

Daily activity monitoring. Activity sensors can be placed on the refrigerator, stove, door, and other objects around the home. Your relative may also wear a watch that monitors activity. You can allow caregivers and physicians to access the data. Set up notifications to be delivered by e-mail, text, or mobile app.: Live!y is a good choice

GCM Technology Guide

Technology moves in nano-seconds and changes almost as fast. Give clients and their families the updated information. For a totally overhauled technology chapter,” Technologies That Support Aging in Place “, by GCM Julie Menack and Berkeley’s head of the Center for Aging and Technology, David Lindeman Ph.D. Get the new Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition

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I’ll be Home For Christmas in Spite of COVID if my Sibling’s Not there

December 6, 2020

Holiday Films Can Be About Ruptured Relationships

For many of us, the road home for the holidays is rutty especially this year with rampant COVID. For some, the path has gaping potholes. It can remind us of childhood conflicts between siblings that ruptured our relationship. Adult children who would still gather with elderly parents and siblings may be glad we all should not travel on the holiday this year due to the pandemic, as they avoid the awful holiday with an estranged sibling.

A great film to watch for nasty sibling rivalry with the comic brilliance of Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti is Fred Claus. Fred neglected by Mrs. Claus by favorite son St Nick, who takes all his presents, turns to life as a repo man to get even. It sounds like a dumb film and is a little dumb but has a stellar cast in Kathy Bates, Miranda Richardson, Kevin Spacey, and Rachel Weisz.

Adult Sibling Rivalry Usually Starts in Childhood

Serious sibling rivalry happens when the damage was done by a sister or brother years ago, leaving a never healing gash in our mind. In fact, that old wound from a sibling may still fester and ooze enough to lead us to say we believe we don’t want to see the family on the holidays.

We feel we hate our siblings for many different reasons. The chief complaint that lurks in our mind is that Mom or Dad favored them over us. She got the new prom dress for her high school celebration, and a few years later we ended up with her hand-me-down. Dad sent him to a great four-year college, and we were sent to a community college near home. She was the baby so got to grow up with late curfews and loose rules, when Mom and Dad were unbearably strict with the rest of us. He was the oldest and Mom needed him to take care of the bunch of us, so she let him boss us around. He was the stepsibling who moved in and took over half our room.

Sibling Rivalry Can Stop Adult Children FRom Helping Aging Parents Stay Safe From COVID

That can all come back again if adult children do travel back for the holidays, against all CDC and State warnings. Just traveling back could give the adult child or worse, the elderly parent, the unwanted gift, like lethal coal in their stocking, COVID. But if the siblings do journey all back to the family celebration, they all can open Pandora’s box of the past, picking favorite siblings or parental slights. Whatever happened in their childhood, can flashback like holiday PTSD. If the aging parents are struggling they may look for a GCM, so make sure that skill is on your website and be very sure you have skills in working with sibling rivalry. My book Care Managers Working with The Aging Family has a chapter in it with tools to work with adult siblings.

Siblings Need TO Work Together to Keep Aging Parents Safe From Pandemic

This is a time when adult parents need adult siblings to work together as a team to ensure aging parents’ safety during COVID. This means not even going home to risk COVID. Adult children staying home also means one sibling setting up a virtual family

meeting to create a family plan to increase aging parents quality of life while sheltering in place alone with rising loneliness and isolation, It means making sure they have and are using all safety precautions against getting the virus and having a family plan if they are hospitalized, then discharged to recover or even to recovering with no hospitalizations if hospitals are full and turn patients away. . A geriatric care manager can offer that to the family.

Start a Coaching COVID Service for AGING Families

So pre Holiday, add Coaching Adult Children and marketing this skill to Help their older relatives with COVID risks and use your knowledge of helping adult sibling strife to help them help their

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