Are You Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees?

December 12, 2022

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.

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 to 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.

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How Storytelling at Thanksgiving Can Give Elders A Happier Family Holiday

November 22, 2022

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 stories 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 up 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.

Sweet grandmother holding a beautifully cooked turkey dinner.

Best Tool to Give the Family Holiday Hope

November 14, 2022

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.

Social isolation, which is experienced by some caregivers, is also predictive of increased alcohol use.

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

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

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

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

November 1, 2022

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

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.

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

Adult Sibling Rivalry at Thanksgiving- Where To Get Help?

October 25, 2022

Siblings are The Biggest Source Of Stress Between Human Beings

At family rituals, like Thanksgiving next month, adult siblings often are often brought back together. If you are one- will it be a happy feast or wrecked by holiday sibling rivalry??

Sibling Rivalry Can Give Acid Reflux to Grandma’s Thanksgiving Dinner

As Gail Sheehy said in her book, Passages in Caregiving, we think that siblings will automatically support each other when aging parents fall apart. Sheehy quotes sociologists, Karl Pillemer and J. Jill Suitor, on sibling rivalry, in a study they did conclude that siblings are inherent rivals and the biggest source of stress between human beings.

If you are a midlife sibling, perhaps you have a brother or sister to whom you hardly speak because of sibling rivalry. Maybe you are about to see your siblings at the coming Thanksgiving feast, even on zoom during COVID, and anticipate largely ignoring him or her or doing chitchat as you seethe the inside. If you fit this description of sibling rivalry, you are in the same lurching boat as uncounted baby boomer siblings all over the world.

Childhood Wound Ripped Open

That wound from childhood may still ache enough to keep you on the furrowed path your family followed when you were young. Now, however, you and your adult siblings, nearing or at retirement age, may need to come together again to be part of a niece or

adult siblings need to come together for aging parents

nephew’s wedding or christening, help plan a parent’s anniversary dinner, or, most important, oversee the increasing care of elderly family members.

Best Thanksgiving Sibling Rivalry Film

I suggest you watch Pieces of April, a fabulous Thanksgiving film ( lead 21-year-old Katy Holmes debuts in a standout performance) where the film’s dysfunctional family revolves around adult sibling rivalry. The film is also about interracial couples, and in the end, around a catastrophic illness of the aging parent, where the siblings need to resolve their differences. It also makes it a trifecta with dementia. The grandmother, who has dementia is taken out of her nursing home to join the dysfunctional Thanksgiving feast and offers surprising sanity to the sibling-rivalry drama.

If you recognize this problem in your own family, seek counseling before coming the holidays engulf you. Contact the Aging Life Care Association to find help before a parental crisis.

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

holiday sibling rivalry

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

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

Featuring Speaker

Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management

THIS FREE WEBINAR IS Tuesday, November 16th, 2021, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

Sign Up Now

Find out more about dysfunctional families and sibling rivalry from My YouTube, Channel

Are You Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees?

Are You Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees?

How To Thank Staff All Year

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

SIGN-UP

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

Contact

Connect with Cathy

Get Cathy’s “10 Critical Success Steps to a Profitable Aging Life or GCM Business”

Are You Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees?

How To Thank Staff All Year

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

Want to increase aging parents’ and everyone’s enjoyment at Thanksgiving? Try storytelling at Thanksgiving using elders’ memories.

Share Your Thanksgiving Story

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

Capture Your Families Past Before It Is Gone

Story Telling at Thanksgiving with Story Worth

Hope is the Best Tool on the Holidays !

Use of Self

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

Sparring Cats and Dogs AKA Siblings

Why Their Stocking is Full of Coal

Dysfunctional families are not able to organize themselves

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

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

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

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

SIGN UP FOR MY FREE HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

Siblings are The Biggest Source Of Stress Between Human Beings

Sibling Rivalry Can Give Acid Reflux to Grandma’s Thanksgiving Dinner

Childhood Wound Ripped Open

Best Thanksgiving Sibling Rivalry Film

Featuring Speaker

Contact

Connect with Cathy

Get Cathy’s “10 Critical Success Steps to a Profitable Aging Life or GCM Business”