moving parent in your home Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

My Dad & Veterans Day , Prison Camp,PTSD, VA GRECC Program

November 11, 2020

I moved my own Dad so let me tell you our story on Veterans Day.

It is key to his move. He was a World War II navigator shot down in Poland and transferred to

. He returned home a broken man with PTSD, never took a bus, drove, or flew on a plane again. His disability, like so many vets, was untreated for 50 years. He worked as an advertising agent ala Mad Men and drank like Don Draper. Our family crumbled into a dysfunctional maelstrom, as most families do.

VA GRECC SAVED THE DAY

Finally, after my mother died, I talked him into going to the VA where he did get treatment through the GRECC program. My brother who lived with him died, my Dad found his body and the house caught fire, I then moved my Dad out to a board and care and had the house rebuilt. However, it was Edgar Alan Poe’s House of Usher The perfect storm of 89 flooded the whole house again just like Hurricane Sandy. We lived on the bay off the Jersey Coast, since devastated by the rising ocean.

On Christmas Eve I got him an emergency flight to California with only his clothes and he moved in with us for 20 years, until his death. Was it a good move-?

Yes, it was a great move.

My Dad had privacy, although he was on the floor with his 8th-grade granddaughter who dearly loved him- now 40. They both had their own bathrooms. He became the center of the family when he had been a distant removed father. The great-grandchildren Julia & Joseph, my brother’s son Chris and my children Jill and Kali adored him and he loved them. He was “ Pop”.

So on Veterans Day, I would like to give you my own fraught story and remind you of the horrible struggle veterans go through salted by the anguish visited on their families. But there is a great part of the VA and its GRECC. So happy Veterans Day Dad and so glad you moved in with us and had the GRECC program to support us all.

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.

What Concierge Aging Life or GCM Products Work Best During Covid-19?

April 7, 2020

Concierge Clients Who Can Afford Private Geriatric Care Management No Longer Taking Cruises

Tens of thousands are dying in the US and worldwide of coronavirus so a cruise ship of any cruise now wreaks of dying slowly on the ocean with no real hospital and no place to disembark. This is not the product that the upper 10% or anyone would board now. But in better times concierge products like a Viking Cruise as it is understandable to a high-end customer. They buy it –because it has exceptional services and recognizes their entitled station in life. Coronavirus recognizes no status class and kills all equally.

Sell Products Clients Need During the Pandemic

Geriatric care managers, rather than tell inquiry clients they do assessment–should offer products they need in this pandemic – like relocation (moving an older person). Elders who live in dangerous SNF facilities, so vulnerable to COVID-19

In an article from the LA Times Charlene Harrington a Professor from UCFS states”Families with loved ones in nursing homes should consider pulling them out if it’s at all feasible to care for them at home, said Charlene Harrington, professor emeritus at UC San Francisco’s School of Nursing.

“The risk of exposure is so overwhelming,” said Harrington, who has studied nursing homes since the 1980s. “It’s a terrible concern.”

ALCA suggested that you call all the SNF’s in your area and expalin that you specialize in moving elders and can be of help to their clients who are moving out of SNF’s due to family concerns.

GCM Products for the Isolated and Lonely Seniors During Stay at Home Orders

Quality of Life (increasing the joy in an older person’s life who is lonely) can be an important service to offer during the coronavirus pandemic. Seniors who live alone are already isolated, lonely, and depressed and the virus only causes this to explode in their lives. Quality of Life programs like Sage Eldercare’s Humminbird Program has gone remote and can be purchased for a minimal amount for client’s by families or agencies, nationally. Nina Herndon GCM, Sage owner and innovator, started this program several years ago because she was tired of watching elders she served watching TV 40 hours a day. She has brought it into the digital world to serve coronavirus patients nationally. Nina also wrote the Chapter on how to set up a Quality of Life program in my book Handbook of Geriatric care Management 4th edition

Products For Seniors Discharged from Hospitals in Pandemic When SNF’s will NOt Take Them

Home from the Hospital is a GCM product the Safely helps the older client through discharge and the first 3 months to make sure they do not return to the hospital, which now is overrun with coronavirus patients and at capacity.

. Home From the Hospital pinpoints exactly what the older person needs for discharge with the hospital and why the family is desperately calling for help. They are calling for help at a piercing decibel level because nursing homes will not take them for fear of COVID 19 infection of their residents

To do this, offer these products to families third parties, hospitals and nursing homes in this crucial time. develop continuously integrated solutions through a product procedure placed in your company operation manual, along with all of your products so you ensure your staff can deliver, step by a step-that high-end product that the Concierge client especially under the huge stress of the coronavirus with vulnerable parents -just purchased and demands. If you do not have an operation manual, I have all these products in my GCM Operations Manual plus 11 more, with all the procedures in place so you can instantly offer them. I will offer a 20% discount for the GCM manual during the pandemic for Geriatric Care Management Agencies suffering during the coronavirus outbreak. Contact me here

Before a Parent Moves in-Check if You Can Handle the Care

October 14, 2019

Happy Birthday to my Dad, Harry V. Cress.

Today he would have been 99. He was a father who had severe PTSD from being imprisoned in a WW2 prison camp in Germany. So, at times , he was a difficult Dad. He worked all his life as an advertising man. But, he suffered from all the PTSD symptoms from what he thought was the good war, so he never reached out for help. He moved in with me in 1989, after he lost his house on the New Jersey coast to ” The perfect storm”. But, once I got him into the VA in Menlo Park, California, he lived with me and my family for 20 years and was the perfect great grandfather, grandfather, and father.

However, as a cautionary tale, I was first surrounded by a very supportive loving family as a caregiver and second was a geriatric care manager. I also had the full help of the VA and all their incredible GRECC services that covered all the medical care, caregivers, geriatric social workers to support me as a caregiver, as my Dad, as a PTSD survivor was 100% disabled. He was a happy independent person for 14 years making our family a three-generation web of real happiness and constant family celebrations as a living ” whole” family. But as he gradually aged, developed vascular dementia then cancer, dying at our home in 20o8

So, moving a parent in your home is not for everyone

Moving an aging parent in your home encompasses not just the present but perhaps 20-30 years in the future. It means accepting the parent as they are in the moment, which may be ambulatory, cognitively intact and independent but seeing they will be gradually affected by the decrements of aging.

What challenges do you face?

Your parent may have perfect vision now and because of macular degeneration need a great deal of support in mobility, eating, and all the activities and daily living in the future. They may eventually be bedbound or is the later stages of dementia. The geriatric care manager needs to discuss the move in terms of what the future may bring for the adult child caregiver and discuss whether they feel they can accept this increasing level of care, if they could face caregiver burnout, if there are financial assets to hire caregivers to assist them or should there is a plan that may move the older person eventually to a higher level of care when care needs to increase.

What are the answers?

The GCM can do a GCM caregiver assessment if care needs to be rendered when the parent moves in. This will help the adult child see their strengths, skills, and abilities needed to provide care. This might include their own medical issues preventing caregiver tasks like lifting and tasks that they find and tasks they find repulsive, like changing adult diapers. This assessment can include a care plan that recommends family caregiver solutions, like aging technology, social supports, formal supports, respite, and training.

At my Dad’s funeral, my daughter said, ” we thought we were saving him but is so many ways he saved us. So Happy Birthday Dad you saved all the love for you I might have missed. Thanks for that grace.

Moving A Parent in – Anxiety and Depression About The Move

January 7, 2014

Considering Moving an Aging Parent into Your Home?

After the holiday when adult children gather and find a parent so disabled that they should not live alone anymore, then consider moving a parent in. I did this with great success in the ’80s as you can see by the photo above. But I teach geriatric care management and knew exactly what I needed to do to make it work. So if you found coal in your parent’s stocking – do not move the coal to your house, consider what changes you need to make or if you should even do this by hiring a geriatric care manager first to help you decide then help make a successful move and living situation. A recent PEW study shows the number of multi-generational households has jumped from 6.2 million to 7.1 million in the last two years — a faster growth rate that the previous eight years combined.

What a Geriatric Care Manager Can Do to Help Your Decide

Before moving a parent into an intergenerational family situation, both a parent and adult child should consider having an Aging Life Care Manager assess the older person with a psychosocial assessment. The GCM can use the psychosocial assessment to assess depression, anxiety both of which may result from such a move after the elder given up their own space, their home.

Losses of Moving For An Elder

An elder’s home reflects their history their own individuality, their privacy, and all their memories. The GCM can create interventions that the adult child can carry out to help with these mental health issues. There are also the issues of loss as the aging parent may after giving up their home, privacy, and history encased in their furniture pictures and the sense of home they have given up.

The Anxiety and Depression of Moving for Elder

The aging parent can bring furniture and photos into that reflect their old home, but the deep feeling of loss, expressed in perhaps unanticipated anxiety and depression needs attention. I would certainly be consulting their primary physician but perhaps, new activities with the family, outside social engagement, quality of like interventions like continuing to go to baseball games, a knitting group, play bridge, attend yoga or travel, as examples.

Blending families does not always go smoothly and his best approached with caution and professional help before all make a decision to cohabit.

A geriatric care manager or aging life care manager can also help your parents get engaged in outside activities by doing a quality of life assessment to find out the activities they enjoy and get them engaged in what they like to do in the community. This was the secret of my success. My mother in law and Dad moved in from different sides of the US for widely divergent reasons. ( pictures in family Photo above).His home was flooded by the storm of the century in 1989 after I had just remodeled it and Becca my mother in law was living with the ” Love of her Life” and he had a stroke.

She was by nature a social butterfly. So I got her engaged in a women’s group at the local senior center, chair exercise, the blind center as she had macular degeneration and Sunday’s at the local Presbyterian church.

My Dad was more a recluse having PTSD from World War 2 and eventually I got him involved in the Catholic church, Cindy’s Celebrations local faith-based senior services where he and Becca went to lunch once a week. They celebrated their birthday, took them to great restaurants each week and played the big band music they loved in the Van. I arranged all transportation through our senior transportation LifeLine, both churches provided their own transportation as did Cindy’s Celebration