Take This Test -Can You Take A Dysfunctional Family Case After the Holidays ?

December 20, 2021

Do You Have the Clinical Skills to Give Hope to The Dysfunctional Family Calling Desperately On the Holidays –

What does it Take?

1. Do you know the right caseload mix so you have the intense time to handle these very heavy care families?
2. Do you have 5 years of geriatric care management practice, a master’s degree to understand and work with them??
3. Do you have care managers who can work with these complex aging dysfunctional families?
4. Do you have the business model to realign your caseload for many of these time-intensive cases?
5. Do you know aging family dynamics or do you have a staff member who does
6. Can you increase your staff to do this?
7. Do You Know How to do a two call intake and complimentary consultation
8. Do You know how to make the sale to dysfunctional aging clients
9. Are you ready to be fired and have account receivable problems that come with these cases?
10. Do you know how to answer the challenge the dysfunctional, needy demanding adult children face and the client’s needs at the same time?
11. Do you know how to hold an impromptu family Dysfunctional meeting with adult children, over the hectic holiday to plan care for aging parents?
12. Can you work with narcissistic entitled older clients who are very demanding
13. Can you emotionally handle the demeaning, blaming attitude of narcissistic old and new monied clients
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  - Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders
  - Master 11Vital Clinical Tools you to solve client problems
  - Take Six Clinical Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
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Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel Geriatric Care 1

How Storytelling Can Give Elders A Happier Family Thanksgiving

November 22, 2021

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

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 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.

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11 Clinical Steps to Work with Dysfunctional Families-Post Holidays –

Thursday, January 6, 2:00 PM 3:30 PM Pacific

Give frantic adult children hope when they desperately call after the holiday

Join me and learn how to come to the rescue of concierge dysfunctional families who found coal in their stockings.

Learn how to:

Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders

Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family

Master the 5 Clinical Tools – you need – to solve these problems with your clients

Learn Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families

Sign -Up Now so even if You Cannot Attend You Get the recording

Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel Geriatric Care 1

How Can Someone with Dementia Have a Better Quality of Life on a Holiday ?

April 2, 2021

Reminiscence and Story Telling

This Easter holiday is the perfect occasion to engage elders with dementia. The role of storytelling and reminiscence is very important for elders, as they look back on their life and holidays bring strong long-term memories. It gives them a chance to socialize as they tell their story. It also means someone usually listens or documents. That magically gives the elder social interaction and connectedness. So many Easter rituals can prompt stories for elders with some level of dementia. The ritual of dying easter eggs, finding easter baskets on Easter morning, dressing up for the local Easter Parade, eating ritual foods at Easter dinner or at Easter Brunch. Whether the older person is actually participating or watching, these rituals can prompt stories from their long-term memory.

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

This gives the older person a chance to give the larger picture of their life and family history to children and grandchildren or extended family, who may have not heard all the details of their grandparents or parents’ life before- what they cooked, what they did on holidays like Easter. So the quality of the older person of both the older person and the aging family is increased through oral history and reminiscence

The aging professional can suggest family or friends just sitting down and prompting a story or oral history using technology like your phone

Even elders with Alzheimer’s can find new joy with Reminiscence

When an elderly person develops Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, the short-term memory is frequently affected but long-term memories can remain as intact and vivid as they have always been during the course of the patient’s life. As a result, a family can use a practice called reminiscence therapy to help combat the frustration, confusion, and depression that can often accompany dementia and even bring joy to the older person

What is reminiscence therapy?

Reminiscence therapy is like a therapy session where the elderly person will spend time recalling memories of his or her life, perhaps telling stories about things that happened and events the person can recall.

Sometimes senior experts or family members can use photos, familiar objects, or other such things to help jog the memory of the patient. Some therapists and family members can a scrapbook of a person’s life, including photos, letters, and other such personal memorabilia. This becomes a visual biography of the patient’s life and helps the older person remember who he or she is.

How does this quality of life therapy help? Almost all elderly men and women can start feeling discouraged and frustrated with their memory issues. Reminiscence can give peace and acceptance of the current situation by helping the person remember that he or she has had a good and full life. It also prompts communication skills of elderly people who otherwise may not feel very compelled to open up and share anything with anyone else.

Dementia and Reminiscence of Easter

So this Easter holiday try reminiscence. People with dementia can receive a richer quality of life when people actually listen to them. They feel as their thoughts and feelings actually matter. For anyone who has an elderly loved one suffering from dementia, this benefit alone can make reminiscence therapy a form of joy for a very confused elder. So when you dye Easter eggs, create easter baskets, do an Easter egg hunt, serve an Easter brunch or dinner, get them involved, let them watch, allow them to help if possible, serve them ritual food or to taste it and ask when how they experienced these rituals, when they were young. If you have old albums of pictures from their childhood of them at Easter, look and the photos with them. Then listen.

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Email: cressgcm@got.net

End of Life-When Do You Need Mediation?

February 23, 2021

Why do some families need mediation at the end of life? Mediation is a voluntary process in which the parties, with the help of an impartial third party mediator, work together to resolve their differences or solve a problem they were unable to address satisfactorily without help. These family differences especially happen to dysfunctional families but can beset any family at the end of life. They are faced with overwhelming emotions and decisions that demand that the family work together as a team. What happens to dysfunctional and even nearly normal families during this trying time? They don’t gather as a team. They fight. They fret and they feud. What are the results of this fighting, fretting, and feuding in families at the end of life?

Unresolved family conflicts emerge

Dysfunctional families become more dysfunctional

Family members’ grief, pain, and anxiety are often masked as anger and presents as conflict (past and present)

Older person dies without resolving important family issues

Older person dies in conflict, not in peace

Deliver a Good End of Life- Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

Serve Your Client Until Death Do You Part

Join me Thursday, March 11, and learn why End of Life Services Are a perfect new service for care managers

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

Transition the patient/family through the five stages of death
Help clients be active participants in their care
Give the family/caregiver tools to manage care
Provide family center care to caregiver and family
Choose the right support services through all stages of death
Introduce Hospice and Palliative care and work with their team
Use ALCA End of Life Benefits During COVID
Use COVID -19 Family Coaching for GCM
Sign Up

If you really want to add End of Life to your care management business sign up for this webinar now

Do You Know How to Use Whole Family Approach to End of Life Issues ?

February 10, 2021

Family Working Together as a Unit

The whole family approach is critical with death and dying. Care managers are often engaged to help facilitate the discussions at end of life, and help family members come together to work as a functional unit.

Understanding the differing viewpoints is critical

Knowing what a parent wants and does not want during the last days and hours of life help define and simplify the role of the family. It relieves the family of the burden of having the responsibility of making decisions which may not be what their parents want, and can also avoid family conflicts when adult children may have differing values.” Proactive discussions and legal planning can help to reduce some of the potential conflicts.

Major Family Issues at End of Life

I found myself with a family member dealing with end of life issues. The

issues were: money as the elderly man would need to have 24-hour care to return home to die and where he would return home, as although the son was unsure, everyone agreed that the son’s home where all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren gathered was the best place.

The most important was should the elderly man withdraw dialysis and extreme measures that were not saving his life. He was competent and had chosen this.

Issues Solved by A FamilyMeeting

All, these problems were solved by two things. The man’s physicians helped him understand the dialysis would not save him from dying. Then a family meeting with hospice and his care managed home care agency LivHome the son and his wife, and myself was set up using the whole family approach.

Hospice facilitated the discussion. The end result was to move to the son’s home, with 24-hour care and Hospice, where the entire family, were gathered in and out all day and the old man died a ” Good Death” knowing that his family surrounded him.

Deliver a Good End of Life- Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

Serve Your Client until Death Do You Part

Join me Thursday March 11 and learn why End of Life Services Are a perfect new service for care managers

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 care

4 Provide family center care to caregiver and family

5 Choose the right support services through all stages of death

6.Introduce Hospice and Palliative care and work with their team

7 Use ALCA End of Life Benefits During COVID

8.Use COVID -19 Family Coaching for GCM

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 “Palliative Care and End of Life Care Manager ” in my book Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family

How Can Someone with Dementia Have a Better Quality of Life on a Holiday ?

Reminiscence and Story Telling

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

Even elders with Alzheimer’s can find new joy with Reminiscence

What is reminiscence therapy?

Dementia and Reminiscence of Easter

Reach Cathy in Social Media

Social media links

Contact

Connect with Cathy

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

Do You Have the Clinical Skills to Give Hope to The Dysfunctional Family Calling Desperately On the Holidays –

What does it Take?

Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel Geriatric Care 1

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

Reminiscence and Story Telling

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

Even elders with Alzheimer’s can find new joy with Reminiscence

What is reminiscence therapy?

Dementia and Reminiscence of Easter

Reach Cathy in Social Media

Social media links

Older person dies in conflict, not in peace

Deliver a Good End of Life- Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

Serve Your Client Until Death Do You Part

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

Family Working Together as a Unit

Understanding the differing viewpoints is critical

Major Family Issues at End of Life

Issues Solved by A FamilyMeeting

Deliver a Good End of Life- Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

Serve Your Client until Death Do You Part

Contact

Connect with Cathy

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