Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Well Heeled Seniors Who Bought Payless Shoes Are Concierge Clients Too

April 12, 2023

Do You Need Concierge Clients?

 

Well, Heeled Seniors are a group you should know about Geriatric care managers and home care agencies need inquiries about services from adult children of concierge seniors. But some Concierge seniors will surprise you.  Older adults who can afford long-term geriatric care management and home care include seniors who shop at Grocery Outlet and lived very frugal lives.

Well-Heeled Seniors Who Used to Buy Payless Shoes

You may be surprised that this upper 10% of the population includes teachers and subway workers.

 

Well-heeled seniors, according to the New York Times, include middle-class retirees who buy shoes from Payless but have a defined pension so they can travel in Europe as retirees and afford care at home care and private care management when they decline

Defined Pensions Directly Affect the Quality of Aging Care

They rode the post-war economy, held jobs long term, and through that defined pension (no 401K) face a very healthy financial picture in aging.  They worked for city, county, and state governments are teachers, truck drivers, social workers, or union members in all trades. They had a career at Xerox, IBM, Campbell Soup, and big Fortune 500 companies.

Well-heeled seniors, these middle-class concierge clients, have adult children who call a geriatric care manager when they visit Mom and Dad and find care problems – or their aging parents have a health crisis. But they will really shop around as they have been raised by frugal parents on limited budgets during their childhood even if their parents now have excellent retirement through defined pensions.

They want the best service and seamless points of the compass that an aging life or geriatric care manager can give each client. These retirees lived on small salaries. Teachers who graduated in 1967 made $5000 a year. So they lived a working life of cautious shopping and tight family budgets. Now in retirement, they can sail down the Danube with their generous defined pensions and afford private duty home care and long-term geriatric care management when they need it or their adult kids who visit home or the emergency room and know Mom and Dad need help.

New Webinar-Why Merge Home Care and Care Management

FIND OUT MORE 

Webinar-Why Merge Home Care and Care Management

When-May 18, 2023 -2 PM -3:30 PM PST

If you are a home care agency consider merging with a  care management agency. A care manager is a perfect person to introduce home care to family caregivers. Care Managers sit down with the family and go over the geriatric assessment and care plan they created for the client. Last, this 1-1 care manager meeting introduces a concierge guide through the labyrinth of caregiving, showing exactly what homecare plus care management will do to solve the client’s problems, increase their quality of life and offer relief to the sometimes-desperate family members. Find out more by signing up for this free webinar

Learn

 

How this merger creates more Profit for both Care Management and Home Care

The Advantages of Merging Home Care and Care Management

Competition Survey to make third parties and Adult Children Choose you

Co-Branding the merged agencies.

Technology for both home care and care management

Co-Locating both staff.

Marketing Merged care manager home care.

Critical Success Factors for the Success of the Merger

-SIGN UP NOW 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, ALCA Beneifits, Blog, care manager, case manager, Concierge Senior, elder care manager, ETHICAL DILEMMA, Families, FREE MARKETING WEBINAR, FREE WEBINAR, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Long Distance Care, Long distance caregiver, marketing care management, marketing pitch, marketing to concierge clients, marketing to long distance adult children, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Webinar Tagged With: affording care management, Aging Concierge client, aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging life or geraitric care manager, black american social workers, black americans, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black RN's, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, care manager, case manager, Concierge Care management, Concierge Care Manager, Concierge Client Sales, Concierge Geriatric care manager, Concierge Home Care, Concierge Senior, Defined pensions, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, LCSW aging, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, retire with defined pension, retiree defined pension, well heeled seniors

Solo Agers Are Vulnerable to Social isolation

March 5, 2023

 

Increase Quality of Life

Solo agers are vulnerable to social isolation and mental health problems, particularly if they lack close family or friendship ties.

Also, known as Elder Orphans, Solo Agers represent about 22% of older adults in the United States. Solo agers are vulnerable to social isolation or are at risk of doing so in the future, according to a 2016 study. “This is an often overlooked, poorly understood group that needs more attention from the medical community,” said Maria Torroella Carney, the study’s lead author, and chief of geriatric and palliative medicine at Northwell Health in New York. Solo agers are vulnerable to social isolation, according to a recently released survey of 500 people who belong to the Elder Orphan Facebook Group, with 8,500 members. Seniors living alone, being unmarried, and not having family or friends nearby are more often lonely and more likely to be depressed and have a poor quality of life. In the study understanding older adults who are aging alone 45% reported being sad and 52% reported being lonely.

Because adults with children may effectively be solo if their adult children live far away or they have a child with a disability who can’t care for them, or they are estranged, more aging adults are looking elsewhere for support to increase their quality of life. 

Solo agers are vulnerable to social isolation although loneliness is a serious concern as all ages are found out during COVID. During the epidemic loneliness, isolation, and depression were experienced by everyone including kids who could not go to school. Seniors experience this all the time. Social isolation is associated with a multitude of problems, such as high blood pressure, insomnia, depression, and cognitive decline. If you lose the ability to drive, develop mobility issues, or live far from friends and family, Solo Agers may have very limited social interaction while aging in place. this a poor quality of life

Increase Quality of Life

Geriatric Care Managers can bring socialization, increase quality of life and so much more to Solo Agers.

Increasing Quality of Life socialization and networks of friends can help solo agers who are lonely. They can also help Solo Agers who are planning their aging plan to increase socialization to avoid pitfalls that so many seniors face in retirement- loneliness, isolation, and depression. The great thing about Solo Agers is that they are planning their aging, are highly educated and have the income for care managers, and can afford private care aging without Medicare covering long-term care

Solo Agers: Your Next Generation Client in the Upper 10)%

Sign -up for Free Webinar 

Description
Who are solo agers
Why you should know about them
What makes them unique as clients
What services you can offer them
How do you market to Solo Agers
How you can do life care planning for them with wealth managers and attorneys

Sign Up 

Filed Under: 3rd party targets, Blog, Concierge aging clients, Content Marketing, estranged elder parents and adult kids, FREE MARKETING WEBINAR, FREE WEBINAR, GCM Benefits, GCM Operations Manual, GCM Operations Manual Class, GCM Start-Up, GCM Webinar, geriatric care manager, geriatric care manager products, geriatric care manager start up, Geriatric Care Managers value, geriatric social worker, Marketing aging life care, Marketing Strategy, marketing to concierge clients, marketing to solo agers, marketing to the top 10$, marketing to upper 10%, nurse care manager, SEO for geriatric care managers, solo agers, Solo Agers and Care Managers, Solo Agers and Depressiom, Solo Agers and loneliness, Solo Agers as planners, Solo Agers Top 10%, Solo and Depressions Tagged With: aging life and geraitric care manager, Aging Life Care Association, aging life care start up, assessing for quality of life, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black geriatric care managers, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, care management business courses, elder depression, elder orphans, emotional quality of life, expert care manager, expert in care management, friendship and quality of life, geriatric care manager start up, isolation and elders, loneliness, Solo Agers, Solo Agers and friendship, Solo Agers and quality of Life, Solo Agers and social networks, start-up geriatric care management aging life care manager, training care managers

Care Managers in End-of-Lift- What is their Role?

January 19, 2023

 

Care managers at end-of-life

Care managers at end-of-life don’t just meet dying patients and their bereft children in the emergency room.

Care Managers at end-of-life can bring in Death Doulas to help the family caregivers follow through with what hospice has taught them as caregivers of their loved ones. Or they themselves can be certified as Death Doulas  to help the families through the caregiver journey for a job they never were trained for whole they grieve at the same time

Care Managers play a big role in end-of-life issues. They are their navigators through all five stages of dying, many times long before palliative care or hospice is called. Often GCM’s can help the family and client to bring in hospice or palliative care.

 The final passage through life can be emotionally charged.  If the family is following a long labyrinth to the end, the blind alleys may be blocked by cultural, religious, and moral beliefs. Care managers can find an opening through this maze.  Money, family dynamics, and fear of dying can all explode a fraught crisis of care in dying. When important end-of-life decisions need to be made, the stress of the responsibility and the seriousness of the situation can break a wave of distress fear, and anxiety over the “whole family system” of the dying elder. The geriatric care manager specializes in this whole family syst

 Care Managers  in end-of-life often help facilitate throbbing discussions and facilitate family members coming together t

Care managers at end-of-life

Sign Up for our new Webinar Deliver a Good End of Life 9 Steps to Death &Dying

Care managers AT end-of-life

Hospice trains the family of the dying person to be the caregivers only once, but their primary focus is the dying person. Death doulas are an adjunct to the medically trained professionals in hospices. They reinforce hospice training. ( For example  fear family has of giving morphine in a needle  in spite of training )Death Doulas give emotional support to the patient and family of the dying person and sources respite, support groups, and help with caregiver burnout for the family, among other caregiver issues at death, They are an alternative to the medicalization of death in the US, described by Atul Gawande. Care Managers at end of life can work well with Death Doulas. We will feature an interview with Patty urban a Death Doulas and a geriatric care manager and member of ALCA

Join Us

Learn About Death Doulas

Upcoming Free Webinar

Deliver a Good End of Life 9 Steps to Death &Dying

Jan 24, 2023, 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

 SIGN-UP 

 

We will feature an interview with Patty Urban a Death Doulas and a geriatric care manager and member of ALCA

FIND OUT MORE 

 

Death Doula

Learn

What is a death doula?

what exactly does a death doula do?

Do Death Doula work with Hospice, Care Managers, or just families

Is there a Charge

How can I contact a Death Doula

How can a care manager be trained as a Death Doula

Patti Urban, a Certified Dementia Practitioner, Senior Advisor, and End of Life Doula, is the owner of Aging Care Planning Solutions, a geriatric care management and end-of-life planning practice.

Description

Deliver a Good End of Life- Atul Gawande

9 Steps to Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

 

Serve Your Client until Death Do You Part
Join me on January 24 2023 and learn why End of Life Services re a perfect new service for care managers

Care managers at end-of-life

Learn to guide the patient/family through the five stages of death. Understand how to help clients be active participants in their care. Give the family caregivers tools to manage care. Find out how to provide family-centered care to caregivers and families. Learn to choose the right support services for the client through all stages of death.
Introduce Hospice and Palliative care to the client earlier and work with their team and a Death Doula for non-medical support
Discover the role of Death Doula at end of life.

  • Serve Your Client Until Death Do You Part

     In this 1 ½ -hour webinar you will learn how to

     1. Transition the patient/family through the five stages of death

  •  2. Help clients be active participants in their care               3. Give the family/caregiver tools to manage care4. Provide family center care to caregivers and family5. Choose the right support services through all stages of death6. Introduce Hospice and Palliative care and work with their team
  • 7. Understand the Role of the Death Doula

Time

Jan 24, 2023, 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

SIGN-UP 

 

 

Gwendolyn LAZO Harris MA, CT, Seniors at Home, San Francisco and Diane LeVan MA both highly expert care managers, created a seminal chapter on  End of Life Care Manager in my book Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family  

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, case manager, Death and Dying Care Management, death and dying care manager, elder care manager, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, ife care manager, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging life and geraitric care manager, Care managers in end-of-life, death and dying, end of life care manager, geriatric care manager, Hospice Care, hospice for elderly parent

Best Tool to Give the Family Holiday Hope

November 14, 2022

images_20141216-184443_1.jpg

 

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.  

Upset

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

Low angle

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

Give the Family Holiday Hope

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

Give the Family Holiday Hope

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

Filed Under: Aging Alcohol Abuse, caregiver, Caregiver Burn Out, caregiver burnout, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Loneliness, Long distance caregiver, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, alcohol on the holidays, Alcolhol abuse in the elderly, care manager, case manager, dysfunctional family, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays with aging parents, My Dysfunctional Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Use of Self

The Holiday Season is Upon Us & Can Be Caregiver Hell

October 21, 2022

Adult children usually see their elderly parents soon on Christmas, Hanukkah, and Thanksgiving- all major holidays.

The Holiday Season is upon us. Thanksgiving, Hannukkah, and Christmas are all coming up when families gather around ritual gatherings. Adult children can notice their aging parents’ struggling with memory, and speech, and preparing those ritual meals. Then midlife siblings may be alarmed by any behaviors that threaten the normal order they always experienced.

When The Holiday Season is upon us ,the discussion will turn to aging parents. Thanksgiving usually involves alcohol. With a normal family, discussing this when alcohol is involved may or may not be a good idea. In an aging long-distance family, this would be the time to set up a family meeting via teleconference or Skype when everyone is sober. You could just ask everyone if would gather ideas and you can discuss it at that time.

With elderly parent’s decline- everyone’s independence is threatened and anger and frustration can be rampant.

If adult siblings did make a  visit to elderly parents before Thanksgiving, it could have been bitter or sweet or it was just plain scary. This is why it is best to set up a post-thanksgiving meeting with all the siblings to discuss care, not when people are drinking more than they should on Thanksgiving.

 

 Adult children may decide they must intercede or offer direct help, even if it is rejected. Then family members who do not live nearby become long-distance care providers, joining 7 million others in the US.

Offer to Facilitate a Telephonic Family Meeting After Thanksgiving

The frightening part often happens when you haven’t seen an aging Mom or Dad for a while. If midlife siblings live long distance, making an occasional visit can set off alarms, especially if they find aging Mom or Dad has gone downhill. If they call you, offer to facilitate the call using your family meeting facilitation skills, to create an agenda with the family, and keep everyone on the topic of parental care in the here and now, rather than fracturing into an argument about the past or old family wounds. With a care manager as a facilitator, they will find your value.

Get Ready for the Holiday Rush

    • SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

      The Holiday Season is upon us

      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        

      The Holiday Season is upon us.

       Find out more about how an Aging Life or Geriatric Care Manager can help.

  • Subscribe to my YouTube channel, Geriatric Care Management, at www.youtube.com/channel/UCaoHdozwS0RvKD23YPpuHIw

  • Visit my website at cathycress.com/

  • Follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/cathyjocress

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Alcohol Abuse, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Blog, Christmas webinar, Dysfunctional Aging Familu, elder care manager, Families, Filial Crisis, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Grandchild gifts for grandma, Hanukkah Webinar, Long Distance Care, Long Distance Care Holidays, Marketing aging life care, Marketing during Holidays, marketing pitch, Marketing Strategy, marketing to long distance adult children, Nearly Normal Aging Family, New Years, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Thanksgiving with Dysfuntional Family, Webinar ALCA GCM, Webinar care managers, Webinar COVID Safety Tagged With: aging family, Aging Life, aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care, aging life care manager, alcohol on the holidays, Black, black aging family, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black geriatric care managers, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black RN's, Black travel nurses, care manager, case manager, crisis with aging parents, drinking on labor day, geriatric care manager, holidays with aging parents, Holidays with midlife siblings, Nearly Normal family inquiry holidays, nurse care manager, Thanksgiving Webinar, Thanksgiving with aging parents, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving with midlife siblings

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