The Ice Storm Cometh Again This Thanksgiving For Aging Parents

November 22, 2020

The Ice Storm is Coming

Kids who grew up in the ’70s will soon have Thanksgiving with their 70 or 80-year-old aging parents. Will they recall the ” Ice Storm”?

In the film, it is Thanksgiving weekend in the early 70″s and a boyish Tobey Mc Guire returns home from prep school to a Thanksgiving feast that his angry sister starts with this prayer.

” Dear Lord, thank you for this Thanksgiving holiday. And for all the material possessions we have and enjoy. And for letting us white people kill all the Indians and steal their tribal lands. And stuff us like pigs, even though children in Asia are being napalmed.”

The Dysfunctional Family’s 70″s Season of Hell

So we begin the descent down the cusp of the 1970s as the nearly normal family shapeshifts into dysfunctional in Ang Lee’s brilliant film The Ice Storm

Lee’s Thanksgiving classic is the perfect reflection of some family’s plunge into the early 70’s season of hell.

If you’re in your 50’s or 60″s and grew up with parents who went haywire through 70’s social change, you will remember the ice storm.

Divorce imploded the family, as we knew it. If you were a parent then you may recall, Key Parties, or Nixon Resigning, Deep Throat, or hear David Bowie who did the soundtrack to the film.

Some Parents of the ’70s Walked on the Wild Side With Open Marriage

With Lou Reed, you can loop back to his fabulous song that spins the period Walk on the Wild Side and maybe recall the template for it the entire era the -book, Open Marriage.

Children of this 70’s social tumult may now share another Thanksgiving with aging parents who put them through hell. What will they do when they find they have to care for those same parents who did not care for them?

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Learn how!

How to sell services to the desperate Aging Family during the holiday surge
How to give hope to frantic children who call when their aging parent struggling with Loneliness and isolation on the holidays
How to help the Aging Family make holiday visits remotely or safely in person
How to counsel the Aging Family to track aging decline &Twindemic risk in loved ones
How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
How to use financial forecasting to prepare for business growth during the holidays

Sidestep the Many Care Managers Who Do not know how to work with Dysfunctional family or do COVID Coaching of Aging Families so the client chooses you

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How To Create a Team in the Long Distance Family During Covid 19?

May 16, 2020

OFFERING A COVID care plan product with Long Distance Care Providers

The first step for the Long-distance family members (LDF) worried about elder exposure and hospitalization of Covid-19 can be to take a team approach. This can be a call with a geriatric care manager for a consultation that will help long-distance families work as a team to keep elder family member safe while you are at a distance This Care management consultation can be done with a HIPAA-compliant video conferencing services

The first thing that the geriatric care manager works on is to find out if the older person has the required legal documents – Advanced directives, POA/HCPOA & GCM HIPAA release because of the risk of both hospitalization and death due to age-related COVID-19. If these documents are not present, the care manager will have a discussion with senior and the long-distance family regarding their wishes, explaining older adults over 65 are at higher risk for severe illness. The care manager will discuss who is to be the health care decision-maker with the older adult and suggest they consult a family attorney or elder law attorney to complete. If they choose not to use an elder law attorney, as time is of the essence in the pandemic, they can suggest access AARP advanced directives documents for any state which can be executed quickly.

If documents are completed, locate in the home and provide explanations to the family that they must give a copy to emergency contacts and physicians as required and place in planning binder. In the planning “Go binder” list all emergency contacts with phone numbers/e-mail addresses – family, friends, physicians, pharmacy, professionals providing in-home services. Also, list all medications and prescribing physicians in “Go Binder”. Upload documents into caregiving applications like caring village.com so the long-distance from always has the updated documents.

Join my new GCM on Line Classes Working on Covid- 19

This research was done by my geriatric care management student GCM Maryann Prudhomme. My students are working on Covid-19 products in both all of my two new online classes in blackboard right now. If you are interested in joining our class and

learning tools to be a geriatric care manager go to cathycress.com online classes

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Conquer Care Management Sales- 5 Steps Close the Sale on COVID-19 Products

Sales have severely declined in COVID_19. Learn how to increase your, clients, through all your products but especially new Covid-19 and telehealth. Sell Successfully

this and any GCM product in a 2-part intake. Closing the sale means the client signing your contract and giving you a deposit. Most care managers are untrained and terrified of this process. They are more terrified of going out of business with COVID 19

Learn the 5 steps to make and close a care management sale to get that contract signed, get a deposit, grow your business, bolster cash flow, make payroll, and stop you from being one of the 50% of new US businesses that fail after five years.

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Date Tuesday, June 23

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Want to Make More $ Billing Aging Life-Geriatric Care Management Hours?

July 25, 2019

The financial projection may be mind-numbing to care managers who started an Aging Life or geriatric care management business with an awesome idea and a toolbox of care management skills. But beware– without the tools and skills to make money- your great idea of a private geriatric care management business may end up bankrupt.

Geriatric care managers need to understand revenue- how they make money to be financial to make a profit. Revenue does come from billing – but poor billing is very unprofitable billing. Money-losing billing is anything less than 85% of your client’s time. When you bill less than 85% you actually start losing money. Revenue is the high tide of money and is calculated by the number of client’s you serve, new client’s per month, number of clients canceling service. % of time billed (the goal is 85%) and what you charge for travel time.

Do you want you and your staff to bill more hours doing care management or aging life? Billing is not just getting more clients. You need to understand what stops you and your staff from billing 85% of their time.

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Learn more about both the ethical dilemma social workers and nurses have about billing- plus

8 critical financial management aging life or geriatric care managers must take to insure a profit .

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Break Through Barriers to Billing & Profit: Financial Management for GCM &Aging Life Care Managers

THIS WEBINAR BEGINS: Wednesday August 21 2 PM PST Ends 3:15PM PST

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How to Give Your Customers Have a Commitment to Pay You

To maintain Cash Flow

To choose the Right Billing Software

To develop Financial Literacy

Why You Must Bill 85%

Understand How To Hire Care Managers Who Can Bill 85%

Understand How to train your Staff 85%

How to Thrive financially at ALCA or GCM

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How is a Geriatric Care Manager a Care Connector With Mid Life Siblings ?

July 15, 2019

We are creeping towards to August which means often seeing our midlife siblings at more summer vacation events. At times we are estranged from midlife sibling or we are polite at a family gathering but there is no real connection.siblings

Aging life or geriatric care managers are care connectors. They cannot do everything themselves for the family , like be the best geriatrician, accountant or home health aide nor do they have the skills to do that. What they have is the skill to connect to the right resource, like a geriatrician , elder-law attorney , support group or home health aide, especially for a family caregiver.

Emotional resources can link a circle of care for the direct family caregiver. These emotional supports could and should include adult siblings .Siblings are the longest and deepest relationship in any person’s life. Reconnecting midlife or aging brother’s and sisters, through the circle of care, is a critical GCM task but to achieve this, the care manager may have to depend his clinical skills in helping siblings with forgiveness or reconnecting siblings who live long distance.

Midlife siblings have often spent the last 30 years tending to their own families .So the point of reconnection with middle aged brothers and sisters often happens when they are still working or just retiring — unexpectedly thrown into a crisis in parent care.

This is where the GCM needs to have clinical skills to can help with healing this sibling disconnection-often short circuited by an old sibling wound that helping the sister and brother work together as a circle of care . You replace the shorted fuse in the fuse box.

If the family is dysfunctional, the care manager becomes a care connector and links the right resources that might include an mediator who specializes in aging families or a Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in Aging (hard to find)

If you are a geriatric care manager or therapist,you can find chapters on mediation, working with the nearly normal family and dysfunctional aging family, siblings, family meetings and care connection Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th ed. for help in all these areas.

It may be 4 months away till Thanksgiving but a an aging parent crisis could happen tomorrow. Reach Out now for help.

10 Tinseled Topped Dysfunctional Family Holiday Films to Enjoy On Chrismas Day

December 7, 2018

Dysfunctional families dread rituals and Christmas or Hanakkuh is a ritual. In the dysfunctional clan, you gather, eat ritual foods and explode. That blast can be triggered by ritual infusions of alcohol, prescription drugs, long-simmering anger, and secrets.

In the film August Osage County, you get a cattle prod version of what family rituals can detonate in dysfunctional families. The ritual is a funeral and Meryl Streep plays the pill-popping mother from hell, Julia Roberts plays one of the angry family members who both hate and love this dying, drunken, 60’s, minted mother. The secret is prescription drugs.

In the film August Osage County, you get a cattle prod version of what family rituals can detonate in dysfunctional families.The ritual is a funeral and Meryl Streep plays the pill-popping mother from hell, Julia Roberts plays one of the angry family members who both hate and love this dying, drunken, 60’s, minted mother. The secret is prescription drugs.

Osage County is one of the nine picks for Best Dysfunctional Family Holiday film. I also favor Katy Holmes is Pieces of April, where she shows herself to be a highly talented actress. She plays a comic- the anguished role of a goth daughter& least favorite child trying to pull off the holiday for her suburban family and dying mother (award-winning actress Patricia Clarkson)in a drab New York walk up. This is actually a film with a surprisingly happy ending and is a cult film that will cheer up everyone nearly normal and dysfunctional families

In” A Merry Friggen Christmas, one of the final films Robin Williams did, this tells the story of Boyd Mitchler’s struggle of dealing with his eclectic family of misfits. When he realizes he left the presents at home, Boyd and his estranged dad (Williams) make the 8-hour drive together.

Here are the other 9

Have a Merry Christmas- share joy and watch movies