Dear Governor Newsome – Don’t Sentence Frail Elders To Ca. Nursing Homes Wrenching Them from Free Loving Family Caregivers!

June 18, 2020

Dear Governor Newsome :

I am on the board of the Health Project Center in Santa Cruz, County that operates the MULTI-PURPOSE SENIOR SERVICES PROGRAM (MSSP program ). and CAREGIVER RESOURCES PROGRAM (CRC) in both Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties.

KEEP THESE NURSING HOMES CERTIFIED SENIORS IN THE CHEAPER COMMUNITY

I am writing to support these programs and implore the governor not to cut their funding. These senior programs were created to keep people out of expensive nursing homes in the 1970s and keep them in the cheaper and nurturing community. By cutting MSSP and CRC the state will only accrue more debt by spending more money to fund now COVID -19 disease-ridden nursing homes. These nursing home certified beneficiaries who are the frailest and poorest of our elderly population. They are kept in the community by MSSP where they receive food services, socialization, and therapy. Their family caregivers receive respite.

Giving these caregivers respite can be the difference between caregiver burnout due to unpaid relentless 24-hour care of a loved one. Burnout ends in placement in nursing homes. But with COVID -19 still rampaging many cannot even get in.

CAREGIVER RESOURCE CENTER KEEPS FRAIL SENIORS IN FREE FAMILY CARE VS NURSING HOME PLACEMENT $80,000 a year

Respite to caregivers to stop inappropriate placement in nursing homes is one of the main functions of the Caregiver Resources Centers in California, which needs its funding kept intact by the governor. The Center provides support to families caring for loved ones with cognitive impairments such as Alzheimer’s Disease, making referrals to caregiver counseling, support groups, local caregiver service, and giving small respite grants. Without the caregiver falling apart, which the Caregiver Resource Center stops, once again, the older nursing home certified client will just end up being forced to trying to get into a nursing home at $80,000 a year, when the family caregiver was FREE.

IF these programs are demolished by the governor and MSSP and CRC are axed out in a blood-spattered cut and these frail seniors will be dumped into California nursing homes where the state will spend needless money it does not have.

STATE WILL PAY $80,000 A YEAR PER PERSON FOR NURSING HOME PLACEMENT VS. $5000 FOR MSSP

These programs save the state money. Each of the MSSP clients is disabled enough to be eligible for nursing homes and poor enough to be eligible for MediCal. So instead of the

state paying $80,000 or $90,000 per person per year in a nursing home, the State pays only on average a little over $5,000 for the person to be in MSSP and nothing for the family caregiver. .This makes the cuts both fiscally wrong and mystifying.

MSSP CUTS MAKE RECIPIENTS GO TO NURSING HOMES WITH 0 TESTING, JUNK PPE THAT LOOKS LIKE GARBAGE BAGS WITH HOLES

Seniors have borne the greatest share of death already from COVID-19, as over 50% of the dead in the US are now elders from coronavirus who lived in a nursing home rife with the virus. These MSSP participants, without the support of MSSP, will have to turn to nursing homes. According to the House Select Committee on Nursing Homes a few days ago, these facilities do not have enough testing and personal protective equipment to stop the virus from spreading. They do not even have PPE and at CMS direction, FEMA has been sending out junk for PPE that looks like garbage bags with holes. This is what you would be sentencing these frail elders to with the scrawl of the governor’s seal.

CRC CUTS SEND Frail ELDERS FROM FREE FAMILY CARE TO $80,000 YR NURSING HOMES

You are sending these seniors from the loving care of their family to nursing homes with few beds, COVID-19 raging from one bed to the next bed, beds not 6 feet apart, and no

testing or PPE. All this while the state pays $80,000 or $90,000 per person per year in a nursing home when the State pays only on average a little over $5,000 for the person to be in MSSP.

CUTS TRAVESTY IN JUDGEMENT AND MORAL FISCAL BANKRUPT CHOICE

I am a graduate of Berkeley with a master’s in SW in aging planning and community development and this is just planning for more state debt and more seniors dying in expensive, CMS FEMA and Federally caused, death traps called nursing homes.

Sincerely

Cathy Cress MSW

Cathy Cress
cressgcm@got.net
CressGCM Consult
https://cathycress.com/

Santa Cruz, Ca 95062

How Catchy Copy Can Sign Up New Long Distance GCM Clients

November 4, 2019

GCM as Wonder Woman

Care managers need to create a gold-standard written copy to advertise their services to ling distance customers. However, you need a Wonder Woman spin that will make copy stand out from your competition.

Here is a sample you may use for long-distance care providers

1, “If you are a long-distance family care provider for an elder, give yourself Wonder Woman as a powerful sister to help with the care of your aging family member.

2. Using a gold standard care manager is a preventative, prudent excellent choice for 3 reasons.

a. If you live long distance and there is an aging parent crisis, your safest choice is to have a local GCM to solve it. In an urgent situation, the care manager can go to the hospital or emergency room.
b. This is more cost-effective than you getting on last-minute, expensive flights. You can still go but, like Wonder Woman, they can immediately be there to deal with the crisis and solve it. She is good insurance.
c. Before any crisis, you can have the GCM aka Wonder Woman will do an initial assessment and visit your older relative periodically. This is preventative because Wonder Woman can see and solve the problem before it becomes a health crisis that might put your loved one in the hospital.
3. Think of a care manager the way you do one of those blow-up beds. You can pump them up when you need in a crisis—perhaps avoid that crisis, and you yourself can sleep more soundly and with more peace of mind in your own bed.

5. What a geriatric care manager aka Wonder Woman and Superman can do for you are:

Save you money by helping keep your parent out of the hospital and you off emergency long-distance flights.
Facilitate a family discussion of needs, resources, and division of labor among friends family
Recommend ways to proactively prepare and plan for a parent’s possible health care crisis.
Work on family cooperation to formulate a realistic parent-care plan.
.
Assess the strengths and weaknesses of all of the potential caregivers
Help adult siblings resolve conflicts about care decisions.
Help siblings act together in the best interest of the parent
Decrease the tension between hometown and long distance siblings
Help the long-distance care provider deal with guilt and frustration that may result from their inability to provide more of the day-to-day care.
Locate the highest quality aging resources in your aging parents’ area quickly and without you having to do it

Join me in my latest free webinar when care managers busiest season starts after holiday visits can put long-distance families so over the edge and they call you

5 Ways to Tame the Turbulence of Holiday Meltdown in Aging Families

Learn how!

How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays

How to give hope to frantic children who call, after seeing their aging parent struggling with the rituals
How to sell services to desperate adult child callers
How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
How to use financial forecasting to prepare for growth during the holidays
Sidestep the Many Care Managers Who Do not know how to work with Long Distance or Dysfunctional Aging Families so the client chooses you

THIS FREE WEBINAR IS NOVEMBER 21, 2019 FROM 2 PM – 3 PM PST

SIGN-UP NOW

10 Steps to Success in Selling Care Management to Assisted Living

FREE WEBINAR- 10 Steps to Success in Selling Care Management to Assisted Living

THIS WEBINAR BEGINS: Monday, June 24, 2019, 2 PM PST Ends 3:15 PM PST

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

November 2, 2019

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?

1. Do you have 5 years of geriatric care management practice, a master’s degree to understand and work with them??
2. Do you have care managers who can work with these complex aging dysfunctional families
3. Do you have the business model to realign your caseload for many of these time-intensive cases?
4. Do you know aging family dynamics or do you have a staff member who does?
5. Can you increase your staff to do this?
6. Do You Know How to do a two call intake and complimentary consultation
7. Do You know how to make the sale to dysfunctional aging clients
8. Are you ready to be fired and have an account receivable problems that come with these cases?
9. Do you know how to answer the challenge the dysfunctional, needy demanding adult children face and the client’s needs at the same time
10. Do you know how to hold an impromptu family Dysfunctional meeting with adult children, over the hectic holiday to plan care for aging parents?
11. Can you work with narcissistic entitled older clients who are very demanding?
12. Can you emotionally handle the demeaning, blaming attitude of narcissistic old and new monied clients

SIGN UP FOR MY NEWEST WEBINAR. 5 Ways to Tame the Turbulence of Holiday Meltdown in Aging Families
Learn how!
- How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
- How to give hope to frantic children who call, after seeing their aging parent struggling with the rituals
- How to sell services to desperate adult child callers
- How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
- How to use financial forecasting to prepare for growth during the holidays
- Sidestep the Many Care Managers Who Do not know how to work with Dysfunctional Aging Families so the client chooses you
THIS FREE WEBINAR IS NOVEMBER 21, 2019 FROM 2 PM – 3 PM PST

SIGN-UP NOW

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

How Storytelling Can Give Elders A Happier Family Thanksgiving

November 1, 2019

Want to increase aging parents and everyone’s enjoyment at Thanksgiving? Try storytelling using Thanksgiving memories.

As an aging professional, you can bring joy to an older person through reminiscence, storytelling, and oral history even elders with dementia

This Thanksgiving ask 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 story. It 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 this 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 parents’ life before. So a dual dose of quality of the older person of 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.

SIGN UP FOR MY NEWEST FREE WEBINAR.

5 Ways to Tame the Turbulence of Holiday Meltdown in Aging Families

THIS FREE WEBINAR IS NOVEMBER 21, 2019 FROM 2 PM – 3 PM PST

Learn how!

How to give hope to frantic children who call, after seeing their aging parent struggling with the rituals
How to sell services to desperate adult child callers
How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
How to use financial forecasting to prepare for growth during the holidays
How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
Sidestep the Many Care Managers Who Do not know how to work with Dysfunctional Aging Families so the client choose you

SIGN-UP NOW

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

Caregiver Assessment- When The Caregiver Loses Sense of Self

September 22, 2019

One Homeostatic System

When you assess an older client with a family caregiver, you really have two clients. The needs of the family caregiver are different than the needs of the care receiver and the geriatric care manager or aging professional must differentiate those needs to make sure the care receiver’s functional and psychosocial needs are met. The care receiver and the family caregiver are one homeostatic system encompassing the whole aging family. To keep that family healthy and whole, in the middle of swirling care crisis, the care manager must first recognize that there are multiple clients including the person who gives or supervises care. In a health care insult, family members who give care are often referred to by the inanimate wooden term “ resources”. They have also been referred to as “ informants “.

Stripping Caregivers Personhood

This stripping of personhood denudes them of their status as individuals and melts them into the caregivers, thus breeds professional ignorance, like the crowd who watched the emperor with no clothes. We are blind to caregiver’s humanity and thus their own needs.

Seld-Esteem Vanishes With Caregiving

Many family caregivers lose their self-esteem because they fail at so many other parts of their lives when their whole life seems to be taken up by caregiving. They do not get vacations as the care-receiver does not take a break from illness and aging. Often there are few others to give them respite. Caregivers, often they just do not know where to find help or even ask for it. If family caregivers have children and husbands, they are often squeezed between their needs, the needs of the care receiver – thus have no room for their own needs. They are breathless and slogging forward.

Contact

Connect with Cathy

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

MSSP CUTS MAKE RECIPIENTS GO TO NURSING HOMES WITH 0 TESTING, JUNK PPE THAT LOOKS LIKE GARBAGE BAGS WITH HOLES

GCM as Wonder Woman

Here is a sample you may use for long-distance care providers

5. What a geriatric care manager aka Wonder Woman and Superman can do for you are:

Join me in my latest free webinar when care managers busiest season starts after holiday visits can put long-distance families so over the edge and they call you

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 using Thanksgiving memories.

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

Capture Your Families Past Before It Is Gone

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

One Homeostatic System

Stripping Caregivers Personhood

Seld-Esteem Vanishes With Caregiving

Find out more in the YouTube from My Geriatric Care 1 Channel.

Contact

Connect with Cathy

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