Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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How to Capture Family Stories from Seniors on the Holidays

December 22, 2022

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Capture Family Tales From Aging Parents 

Have you captured family tales from older family members? Or have you lost an aging parent and wished you had asked them more questions about their past, your family history, and your childhood? Have you dabbled in ancestry and realized that you could have just listened closely to the stories your deceased parents told you and written them down?

Do not look back! Make this New Year the year you collect the stories from your family. Learn to use 10 reminiscence tools, technology, and techniques to hear family history at holiday dinners and events during Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or New Years.

10 Tips to Capture Family Tales from Aging Parents

1. Use empathetic listening. This means to make all the messages you are giving the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting-  all say, “I want to listen to you.”

2. Ask questions that prompt the story but don’t make judgments. If there are going to record the family tale, do it in a way that doesn’t distract or stop the older person from talking.

3. Start somewhere. If the elder isn’t going to tell stories on his or her own, start the story and see if they will follow along.”What was a New Years’ Resolution that you made and kept” ” Do you remember your favorite doll ” What was your first day of school like”

4. Music is just next to memory in the brain shown by Alive Inside So use Alexa, or Spotify, to play  40’s

and 50’s music or especially the -Simple ways to spark reminiscence when you visit older family members :
5. Look at old photos together. Photos trigger memory even with dementia. Choose ones from a period of time the person currently remembers, which could be the person as a young adult, teenager, or even a young child.
6. Play music from their teenage years. It is the background to the most emotional period of anyone’s life and is deeply lined into memory.
7. Enjoy food they like or food that is a family tradition or specialty, particularly ones that have an element

Family With Grandparents Enjoying Christmas Meal At Table

of memory attached to family celebrations. like Mom’s Briscut, Dad’s Sunday Supper lasagna, or “Aunt Helen’s Lemon Cake”.

8. Story Worth was started by Nick Baum, a tecky who was, in a way, a long-distance care provider for his parents in Sweden. He was curious about their past and invented the app based on his own need to gather his family history. My husband is a teller of past tales as a California Highway patrolman, then Hippiedom, then as top marketing director for Pacific Cookie Company, the best cookies here in the west.

Our daughter Kali gave him Story Worth as a holiday gift. He wrote down 40 stories or memories from his past. They were being published by Story Worth in a book, saving in print the precious reminiscence that would have been lost but now is found in a  book that was given to our adult children and then generations to come.

This is a brilliant way to capture reminiscence and I  recommend it to adult children who want to enshrine personal memories in print that otherwise would be lost when they reach back for them.

9. Life Bio-  provides an online template of biography and autobiography questions that have been carefully crafted

10. Quick Voice Recorder to catch the memory on your phone

Use reminiscence as a part of a whole new domain in aging called quality of life or attending to the older person’s need for joy through activities that stimulate the mind. Reminiscence does that- so find out more about how you can increase the quality of life of older people after the holidays and all year long by building a quality-of-life reminiscence program like Nina Herndon describes in her chapter on Quality of Life in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 

Filed Under: Aging, Blog, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Legacy Tools, Reminiscence Therapy, Senior Legacy, Story Worth Tagged With: aging life care manager, aging life care on holidays, ancestry, Black, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black caregivers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black Heirlooms, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, care manager, case manager, geriatric care manager, holidays with aging parentrs, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, reminicence & Hanukkah, reminicence & Holidays, reminicence and elder, Reminicence and geriatric care manager, Reminicence Therapy, reminicsence technology, Reminiscence tool, rreminicence and Kwanzaa

How Storytelling at Thanksgiving Can Give Elders A Happier Family Holiday

November 22, 2022

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 stories 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 up 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.

Sweet grandmother holding a beautifully cooked turkey dinner.

 

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Build A Small Business With Technology-OR The Wolf will Blow it Down

June 6, 2022

Build Your Small Business on Technology Not Paper or the Big Bad Wolf Will Blow it Down

 

Smart TECH Solutions to Wire Your Care Management Business for Profit

Free Webinar

Hear the Care Management CEOs of GCM software tell you what are the features and benefits of their software

WHEN  Wednesday, July 5, 2022

WHAT TIME_2 PM-3:30 PM Pacific Standard Time

SIGN UP

Build Your Small Business of Technology, not Paper or the Big Bad Wolf  Will Blow it Down

Build your Small Business with technology, not paper so that your small geriatric care management businesses can work closely with your upper 10% of clients to provide them with products and services that add value to their lifestyles while solving their elder care nightmares. Going from an idea to a finished product or service requires small business owners and their employees to collaborate with each other and external vendors. E-mail and instant messenger tools paved the way for online sharing and collaboration. With the ability to instantly connect, share information and get feedback, e-mail and instant messenger are beneficial technological advantages for small businesses. Web-based care management database programs update team members and clients, track time, and share documents in real-time creating care plans, billing, and delivering fast gold standard services.If you build your business of paper, not technology none of this is possible. If you choose technology a care management database is at your fingertips through care management technology. Plus for small businesses, this means up-to-date information available in a central hub, regardless of a person’s location.

Social Media Is a Must Have

Social Media is a Must-Have for Care Management

Today, social media is a must-have for any small business like care management – regardless of what industry you’re in. SEO or Social media has evolved from space for personal interaction into a vibrant marketing channel for small businesses. T Whether you already have a strong social presence or are looking to step up your game, learn more about the benefits of social media marketing for your business.

  • Build brand awareness.
  • Provide stand-out customer service.
  • Acquire leads in a low-cost way.
  • Learn more about your customers.
  • Increase website traffic and search ranking

 

Build Your Small Business with technology

Presented by Cathy Cress MSW – Handbook of Geriatric Care Management

We will Cover

  • with 1-1 interviews with CEOs of major care management software platforms

What you need in a website

  • Critical software programs that make care management information flow
  •  1-1 interviews with CEOs of major care management software platforms
  • Why you need content marketing
  • How & Why to shoot videos for your agency
  • What is an easy-to-use social media site
  • What you need in a website 
  • interview with Natasha Beauchamp on content marketing  forALCA members

SIGN-UP

Sign Up to learn to build your business with the right technology

 The need for elder-care services is huge and growing rapidly. But to survive GCMs must embrace care management SEO technology.

 

Filed Under: Aging, aging life business, ALCA start-up business, ALCA TECHNOLOGY, Black Entrepreneur, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black entrepreneurs, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Black geriatric care managers, Black RN, Black Travel Nurses, Black Travel RN, Care management, SEO, SEO for care managers, SEO for geriatric care managers, Social Media, Social Media for eldercare, social media marketing, social media marketing campaign, Software for care managers, Software for geriatric Care Managers, technology for GCM, Technology for Geriatric Care Managers, Videos, Webinar care managers, Webinar SEO, webinar Technology, Website traffic Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging life website, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black Heirlooms, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black RN's, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, care management SEO, care manager, care manager technology, elder patient advocate, Free webinar marketing, GCM technology, geriatric care manager, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, profitable Geriatric Care Manager Business, social media, social media for elder care, social media marketing, Webinar Cathy Cress MSW, webinar GCM technology

Confused about Care Manager Technology?

June 2, 2022

iStock_000057381852_Medium.jpg

Beware of Paper

Still function on paper?

 

What care management database should you use? Some care managers still function on paper instead of using a care management database. That is a bad business decision. You need to give clients gold standard service to retain them . When you make the right choice of what database to use you will arm your care managers with the most user-friendly fully loaded client database making that gold standard concierge care so much easier to deliver. This gives your care management or homecare agency a more profitable bottom line in running a business. So spending money on a client database makes stock-photo-2811391-three-business-persons-working-with-laptop-in-sunny-office.jpg more money.

What Care Management databases are the ALCA Choices?

What care management database should you use? Some care managers still function on paper instead of using a care management database. That is a bad business decision. You make 30% more money by ditching paper and using a care management database, You need to give clients gold standard service to retain them. When you make the right choice of what database to use you will arm your care managers with the most user-friendly fully loaded client database making that gold standard concierge care so much easier to deliver. This gives your care management or homecare agency a more profitable bottom line in running a business. So spending money on a client database makes more money. Jewel Code has been around for many years.

More recent additions of databases that make information flow

Databases makes information flow.

Caretree and ihealthhome  My Junna are the newest product. Care managers and ALCA managers are fans of  Clear Care, which offers staffing if you also have private duty home care but is not user-friendly for geriatric care managers.  If you are a geriatric or aging life care manager or a private duty home care agency doing geriatric care management- which  GCM Software should you use and why. Find what you need in your client database and check out each product to see if it has what you want.

 

 

What  Should a GCM DatabaseDo For You?

Here is a list of what a care management database should do for you

 

  • database makes information flow
  • Track all client information
  • Create and update a care plan
  • Create a client activity log
  • Tracks billable hours
  • Document client activities
  • Interface with a calendar for client and care manager appointments
  • Track client referrals
  • Track guardianship information
  • Track medications
  • Reconcile medications
  • Create a client face sheet with all demographics
  • Create a caring community
  • Turn phone calls in casenotes&billing
  • Upload documents and pictures
  • Do real-time updates
  • Be HIPPA compliant
  • Store historical client records
  • Create reports and export data
  • Create medication and text message reminders
  • Add custom patient field
  • digitalize patient paper records
  • go paperless
  • interface with care providers in the home via phone
  • Increase billing by making it easy to bill in the field
  • Patient portal
  • Have a calendar

    What Care Management Data Base to use?

    Join me for my Latest Webinar

    Smart TECH Solutions to Wire Your Care Management Business for Profit

  • Hear the Care Management CEO’s of GCM software tell you what are the features and benefits of their software
  • WHEN  Wednesday, July 5, 2022WHAT TIME_2 PM-3:30 PM Pacific Standard TimeSIGN UP
  • Presented by Cathy Cress MSW – Handbook of Geriatric Care Management\\
  • We will Cover       

    What care management database should you use?

    What you need in a website

    • Why you need content marketing
    • How to shoot videos for your agency
    • interviews with CEO’s major care management software platforms
    • What are easy-to-use social media sites
    • How to shoot videos for your agency
    • Critical software programs that make care management information flow
    • What you need in a website
    • Why you need content marketing
    • with 1-1 interviews with CEOs of major care management software platform 1-1 interviews with CEOs of major care management software platforms
    • interview with Natasha Beauchamp on content marketing  forALCA members

    SIGN-UP

    What care management database

    What are care management databases for VIP clients?

    Do You Know The Best Phrases To Attract VIP Care Management Clients? Click Here for FREE Download!

     

    Sign-up for my Free White paper to learn to use the copy & keywords to sign-up for  home care or care management Concierge-VIP Clients who can afford  care management & home care as Medicare does not cover long term care

     

     

     

     

     

     

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, ALCA database, ALCA software, ALCA start-up business, ALCA TECHNOLOGY, Blog, Care Management Software, Caretree, client database, database, Families, GCM database, GCM Software, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Management Software, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, IHealth Home, Jewel Code, My Junna, Natasha Beauchamp, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Social Media for Care managers, Software for geriatric Care Managers, Software gor GCM's, start-up, technology for GCM, Technology for Geriatric Care Managers Tagged With: aging family, aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, ALCA database, ALCA technology, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black Heirlooms, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black RN's, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, care management data base, care manager, care manager database, care manager technology, Caretree, case manager, elder technology, GCM client Database, geriatric care management software, geriatric care management technology, geriatric care manager, geriatric care manager software, IHealthHome, Jewel Code, My Junna, nurse advocate, nurse care manager

7 Reasons You Need My Care Management Operations Manual Class

March 28, 2022

You Need my care management Operations Manual absolutely essential to grow your business. Watch this video to learn why a manual can boost your geriatric business, grow your marketing outreach, and support staff development

Here are 7 reasons why you need my care management manual class.

You need my care management operations, manual class because the class includes 2 free operations manuals.  Most geriatric care owners’ brains usually function as the operations manual- but nothing is written down. Without the owner, the business has little or no value unless you have made a very very large profit. What makes your business more valuable and sellable is well-designed, well-documented systems that almost anyone can operate successfully. Think of  Macdonald’s who invented the operations manual and grew worldwide. The more your business looks like this, the less dependent it will be on the owner, and the more asset value your business will have s you grow and eventually sell..


1. You Can Receive 3 CEUs per Module if you Join or are an ALCA  Member

You need my care management operations manual class, because  the NACCM, ALCA Certification Program  has awarded 3 CEU’s for 19 modules in the GCM Operation Manual Class, for the clinical training the GCM Operations Manual Class Offers including Move Management, Caregiver Assessment, End of Life, Concierge Companion Services to add to your GCM menu of services

2. You need my care management operations manual to deliver  “gold standard” services in your business.

You should purchase my care management operations manual to keep your customers with consistent gold standard excellence in service. Most entrepreneur business owners start their businesses because they believe that they can maintain gold standard excellence at what they do. Their intent from the beginning is excellent products and gold standard customer service. However, as a business grows and new employees are added to the mix, the quality often diminishes. But if the owner gives a customer one gold standard experience and the employees give that same customer low standard service -it lowers the customer’s opinion of the business. A written operations manual will help give you and your team the discipline & step by step process to do what it takes to consistently maintain Gold Standard excellence as the business grows, especially needed when your business is caring for someone’s mother or father.

maintain Gold Standard excellence as the business grows

 

3. An operations manual is the best tool for training new employees.

You should purchase my care management operations manual class because you can use the manual to easily train employees on each service you offer, saving the owner time and increasing the excellence of your training. Most entrepreneur business owners do not have a strong process for training new employees, like a written operations manual. They tell them what they need to do and then expect that new employee to intuitively do what they were told with gold standard excellence. Often the new employee is a disappointment to the owner.

A well-written operations manual will set the standard for performance. It will also give detailed written procedures (how-to’s) on the critical functions of the tasks the new employee is responsible for. Mentoring is always a great idea, but an operations manual is essential as both a standard and a reference tool.

4. Operations manuals free up valuable time for the owner!

Another reason why you need an operations manual is most entrepreneur small business owners feel like they do not have enough time to do the higher level, more strategic functions of their business. They lament that they do not have time to plan and think strategically. Time gets consumed putting out fires and solving problems. This typically happens when the company does not have a good operations manual. Operations manuals, once written, are a tremendous time-saver to give the owner time to do the higher level, more strategic functions of their business.

5. An operations manual makes your business scalable.

 You Need an Operations Manual if you as the owner of a care management agency have to do everything for it to be done right. Your business is not scalable or able to grow up that steep cliff of growth. It cannot grow beyond the time that you as the owner have to “do everything.” You must create systems that are documented in an operations manual for your business to grow in a healthy, sustainable way.

6. You Can Easily expand your GCM Business to a second office…

 An operations manual adds market value to your company by enabling duplication of your agency. You can expand your business to another site because your operations manual makes it a turnkey purchase. A Manual gives you a template to expand your territory

 

7. You need my care management operations manual to sell your GCM Business for twice the amount. 

Why you need my operations manual class is the class includes 25 free complete care management products with step-by-step directions to deliver gold standard services.


Check Out my Geriatric Care Management Manual Class 

Find out what other geriatric care manager entrepreneurs have said about my Geriatric Care Management Manual

Filed Under: Aging, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, care management business, Care Managemeny Operations Manual, care manager, case manager, elder care manager, Families, GCM Operations Manual, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager start up, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Operations Manuals, Selling ALCA Business, Selling GCM Business, Selling Your Business, Therapist Specializing in Aging, Training care managers Tagged With: ALCA CEU's, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black Heirlooms, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black RN's, care manager, case manager, Continuing Education Units, expand caremanagement business, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, gold stand care care, make care management scalable, MCDonalds Operations Manual, My Geraitric Care Management Operations Manual, My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, selling a care management business, Selling ALCA Business, Selling GCM Business, starting a geraitric care manager business, training care managers

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