Geriatric Care Management Tools – Family Meetings

One of the Tools of the Whole Family approach is expertise in conflict. If you are working with a “nearly normal family” and there is potential conflict, a geriatric care manager can facilitate a family meeting

Gail Sheehy in her book Passages in Caregiving, strongly suggests having a family meeting over caregiving issues and offers some guidelines for midlife siblings seeking this tool.

Sheehy proposes not involving the older family member or care receiver at the first meeting, because midlife sibling issues need to be solved first.

Serrated family concerns such as present middle-aged sibling struggles over parent care or brother and sisters life long battles need to be addressed immediately before moving forward with the family meeting.

Solutions like a path to sibling forgiveness need to be road mapped before caregiving problems can be solved. Other strategies like a forgiveness system might be tapped into as a goal before care giving could be shared by adult -child siblings.

The aging professional should have a thorough background in midlife sibling issues before she or he tackles a family meeting. Sparks can fly at a family meeting, because adult siblings gather as a team for the first time since childhood, facing a red hot aging parent problem

The Geraitric care manager should organize this meeting and facilitate it. If you are a dysfunctional family, you should find a  mediator . But the professional third party must know sibling dynamics, such as the parental care giving patterns in midlife siblings, sibling aide and direct services and sibling rivalry extended into midlife.