aging life care Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

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.

- 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

How Do Geriatric Care Managers Give Quality of Life and Joy to LGBT Clients?

June 14, 2019

As June is LGTBQ Pride Month, let us celebrate it by being aware that Senior LGTBQ Elders are bullied, isolated, lonely just like LGTBQ younger people.

A recent report found that LGBT elders tend to have more medical problems, higher poverty levels social isolation than straight elders. Same-sex partners are not allowed many of the resources afforded to spouses and biological family members during the aging process. LGBT elders tend to lack support from many mainstream aging programs such as senior centers and places of worship or they are afraid of the stigma and discrimination that could result from joining those programs.

Mainstream retirement communities often deny LGBT elder couples the right to live in them. They often continue to live on their own, even if they need access to the services offered by those communities. These elders may fear discrimination and being ostracized by housing staff and often stay in the closet to obtain housing. Because large numbers of gay elders choose to live alone, they have fewer opportunities for social interaction than their heterosexual peers.

As a result, many LGBT elders live in the community and can really benefit from the quality of life activities that geriatric care managers can bring into the home through a personal assistance service and reminiscence therapy

One LGBT program in California created social connections by arranging dinner parties, shopping trips, and grocery shopping.

Escorting LGTBQ Elders to movies about gay elders or renting them through Netflix and watching with them is a great activity. There are terrific, even academy award winning film like Beginners, you can watch together and talk about, as activities.

But what about the quality of life for LGBT aging clients. This recent article in the New York Times shows how one retirement community responding and found joy for LGBT clients, where many LGTB aging clients have to fight for acceptance.

If aging life or geriatric care manager want to find resources for LGBT aging clients or more about their issues, The Journal of Aging Life Care has an article with many resources to help you serve these vulnerable clients in finding Joy and acceptance.

The Journal Of Aging Life has a resources list for a research tool for aging LGBT clients edited by Jennifer Crittenden

The Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4^th edition has a seminal chapter written by geriatric care manager Nina Herndon with a quality of life assessment to help you pinpoint the quality of life needs of all clients.

Nina also has developed the first activity kit for the quality of life, Joyful Moments .
Care Managers can use this activity kits to develop quality of life activities with their clients and home care and care managers that have home care can utilize the kit to teach their careproviders to create quality of life activities that give seniors they serve Joy in addition to care ‘

My GCM Operations Manual includes a product Concierge Companion that offers geriatric care managers a quality of life service that provides quality of life activivies to seniors through rereactional therapy aides who follow a GCM Care plan to indivualize quality of life activities for elders at any stage of their aging including dementia.

Why Does the Nearly Normal Family Melt Down Over the Holidays ?

December 9, 2018

Granddaughter hugging grandmother while making a cake together in the kitchen

Many aging families are healthy or a nearly normal family But discovering they must care for a parent can force them into a tailspin. When the parent figure in the family begins to suffer the losses of aging, a filial crisis occurs.

What’s that-? That is accepting your parent in the here and now. When a Mom or Dad is no longer the north stars they were to the family, midlife adult children need to learn to learn to balance parental love and duty with independence. These midlife kids must create a two-way relationship instead of the parent sending, love, money and nurture only one way. This can throw adult children in a nearly normal family into a parental panic.

Nurturing and care have always been a one-way street – ending with them. Were they selfish – no? That’s what good parents do- nurture their children through all the stages of life. However, this new stage takes a two-way street.

The healthy nearly normal family is also thrown off balance by a shock to the system- someone has to replace the Queen or King bee. The person who took the lead role on the family stage has not shown up or forgets their lines. On the holidays they don’t decorate the Christmas tree, forget the words to the blessing on Chanukah, the recipe for Latkes or their famous

Christmas sugar cookies.

Now the adult kids must make the Christmas cookies, Latkes, lead the Chanukah prayers or host Christmas. Many are reluctant to step up to the plate, take over the work of a ritual- be the head of the family

At this giant pause in family play, the family system, even in the normal family must face the loss of control in the system because the parents or parent figures usually have that control. When they can no longer manage on their own, or function as the main gear or guide that moves the family system forward, even the normal spins out of control

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How Do Geriatric Care Managers Give Quality of Life and Joy to Aging LGB and “T”ransgender Clients?

September 1, 2018

The lives of older transgender people are nearly absent from our culture . But Photographer Jess T. Dugan and social worker Vanessa Fabbre traveled throughout the United States creating To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults.

An article in the New York Times in the past week talks about the book and the void in not only the public’s mind about transgender elders but I might point out the aging community. It is time to pay attention. These older men and women rarely have families and retirement communities often present so much bias that these elders still live alone

Mainstream retirement communities often deny LGBT elder couples the right to live in them so they often continue to live on their own, even if they need access to the services offered by those communities. These elders may fear discrimination and being ostrasized by housing staff and and often stay in the closet to obtain housing. Because large numbers of gay elders choose to live alone, they have fewer opportunities for social interaction than their heterosexual peers.

As a result many live in the community and can really benefit from quality of life activities that geriatric care managers can bring into the home through a personal assistance service .

One LGBT program in California, created social connections through arranging dinner parties, shopping trips and grocery shopping .

Finding activities that help elders grow and nurture their emotional, intellectual, physical, and/or spiritual quality of life can help to nurture an older person’s whole life and bring back joy. But what about the quality of life for LGB or Transgender aging clients. This recent article in the New York Times shows how one retirement community responding and found joy for LGBT clients, where many LGTB aging clients have to fight for acceptance.

If aging life or geriatric care manager want to find resources for LGBT aging clients or more about their issues. An article in the Gerontologist has a resources list for research tool for aging LGBT clients.

Besides reading speaking to older LGTB groups in what a geriatric care manager can do to understand their needs and how your services can help. I will be speaking to my local local group in the Diversity Center of Santa Cruz County this fall , just to do that. Reach out to your LGTB community. It can grow your business and help elders who are often without support.

Why Does the Concierge Nearly Normal Family Melt Down Over the Holidays ?

December 16, 2017

Many concierge aging families are healthy or a nearly normal family. But discovering they must care for a parent can force them into tailspin. When the parent figure in the family begins to suffer the losses of aging, a filial crisis occurs.

What’s that-? That is accepting your parent in the here and now .When a Mom or Dad is no longer the north stars they were to the family, midlife adult children need to learn to learn to balance parental love and duty with independence. These midlife kids must create a two-way relationship instead of the parent sending, love, money and nurture only one way. This can throw adult children in a nearly normal family into a parental panic.

Contact

Connect with Cathy

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

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

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

Offer to Facilitate a Telephonic Family Meeting After Thanksgiving

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

Get Ready for the Holiday Rush

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

Contact

Connect with Cathy

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