Passover Begins Friday-Care Managers Can Support Clients Spiritual Needs

April 11, 2022

Passover begins Friday and brings many Jews will celebrate with a seder

where their spiritual beliefs will be celebrated with food, family, and ritual.

As we age joining in spiritual rituals means more and more to us. Ritual

religious holidays like Passover fill all faiths, but especially elders faiths and both spiritual and emotional needs.

A Care Manager needs to learn how to offer elders support and inclusion during holidays like Passover or any religious holiday.

Care management is first and foremost a holistic interaction between

a caring professional and an older adult. Holistic care works

with the senior beyond just the necessary formal services. Care

managers should work with the seniors and their families to know their religious needs if any. Getting to know the person includes understanding the physical, social, emotional, and spiritual needs and how you can help them get included in the celebration.

Even though Passover begins Friday the average care manager does not see themselves as doing therapy with their clients or encouraging religion. But the work of Carl Jung or Viktor Frankl may be more than is useful. For most care managers , it is helpful to follow a few rules:

1. Listen to the client. Understand the client’s perception of the religious phenomenon as the person describes it and how you can help them celebrate Passover or any religious holiday if they wish.

2. Listen to his or her the perceptions of the client’s faith tradition and

spiritual beliefs and how much and how they want to be included in family celebrations or religious services so you can help them do this, through contacting the family, the spiritual place of worship, so they can attend and have transportation or arrange some form of celebration if homebound

3. Consult with the Rabbi from the Temple near them, who can help interpret any

beliefs or rituals or symbols that cannot be fully understood from the description of the client and if the temple has transportation for elders to services if the client wishes to attend.

Read Rev.James Ellor’s, Ph.D., LCSW, DCSW, Baylor University’s excellent chapter on Spirituality and the Geriatric Care Manager.

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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.

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

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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

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Take This Test -Can You Take A Dysfunctional Family Case After the Holidays ?

December 20, 2021

Do You Have the Clinical Skills to Give Hope to The Dysfunctional Family Calling Desperately On the Holidays –

What does it Take?

1. Do you know the right caseload mix so you have the intense time to handle these very heavy care families?
2. Do you have 5 years of geriatric care management practice, a master’s degree to understand and work with them??
3. Do you have care managers who can work with these complex aging dysfunctional families?
4. Do you have the business model to realign your caseload for many of these time-intensive cases?
5. Do you know aging family dynamics or do you have a staff member who does
6. Can you increase your staff to do this?
7. Do You Know How to do a two call intake and complimentary consultation
8. Do You know how to make the sale to dysfunctional aging clients
9. Are you ready to be fired and have account receivable problems that come with these cases?
10. Do you know how to answer the challenge the dysfunctional, needy demanding adult children face and the client’s needs at the same time?
11. Do you know how to hold an impromptu family Dysfunctional meeting with adult children, over the hectic holiday to plan care for aging parents?
12. Can you work with narcissistic entitled older clients who are very demanding
13. Can you emotionally handle the demeaning, blaming attitude of narcissistic old and new monied clients
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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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How Does Atul Gawande View Quality of Life in Dying ?

September 15, 2021

A good life to the very end

Atul Gawande’s acclaimed book, “Being Mortal“ opened our eyes to the medical way of death. He showed millions of readers how the quality of life and human interaction while dying trump the number of years gained through questionable painful procedures and dying in an institution.

He tells us that “our ultimate, goal, after, is not a good death but a good life to the very end

Quality of Life Can Be There to the End of Life

GCM Nina Herndon brings you that same quality of life message- about dying –where an elder can still live the end of life with joy. Her chapter “Supporting Clients’ Quality of Life: Drawing on Community, Informal Networks, and Care Manager Creativity” in the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition is a geriatric care management Nina has devoted her career to giving elders a care plan for a happy life and a happy life to the very end.

Bringing Joy in the here and now of Dying

Bringing joy in the here and now of dying can be done through using quality of life tools- Spiritual, emotional, intellectual, creative, and physical quality of life. Increasing the spiritual quality of life can mean for a person is dying and wishes to return to a spiritual group she knew before, connecting them to the faith they are familiar with. Even homebound clients can have visits from members of a religious community or a prelate. They can have hymns sung, prayers said or whatever religious ritual their spiritual group follows, like communion, at home. Care providers can be trained to engage them by reading religious texts or playing hymns.

The Power Reminiscence at End of Life

Spirituality can be the environment. I once had a client who was in a nursing home dying of cancer and wanted to go home to die with hospice and 24-hour care. His spirituality was the environment and he had been a lead volunteer to build a trail in Santa Clara California from Los Gatos up the steep winding highway 17 over the Santa Cruz mountains to the Lexington Reservoir. He had no family so the care manager asked the volunteers he had worked with if they would visit him at his home. They happily agreed and 300 volunteers took shifts, 24 hours a day to sit with him reminisce, tell stories and sing while he died over several weeks. This is what joy that bringing a spiritual quality of life can offer in dying.

Tools for Reminicance at End of Life

Friends emailing short personal videos with good wishes and memories, that a family member can show on a phone or computer- can bring emotional joy at end of life. Sending notes, not of condolences but great memories can be a salve to dying. Volunteering to give respite to family members, if visiting is allowed during COVID or post the pandemic, can give an opportunity to share old memories or look at old photos and give family respite. You may have thought those old photo albums should be dumped but they can bring the joy of reminiscence if shared at end of life or with seniors at any time.

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