Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Solo Agers Are Vulnerable to Social isolation

March 5, 2023

 

Increase Quality of Life

Solo agers are vulnerable to social isolation and mental health problems, particularly if they lack close family or friendship ties.

Also, known as Elder Orphans, Solo Agers represent about 22% of older adults in the United States. Solo agers are vulnerable to social isolation or are at risk of doing so in the future, according to a 2016 study. “This is an often overlooked, poorly understood group that needs more attention from the medical community,” said Maria Torroella Carney, the study’s lead author, and chief of geriatric and palliative medicine at Northwell Health in New York. Solo agers are vulnerable to social isolation, according to a recently released survey of 500 people who belong to the Elder Orphan Facebook Group, with 8,500 members. Seniors living alone, being unmarried, and not having family or friends nearby are more often lonely and more likely to be depressed and have a poor quality of life. In the study understanding older adults who are aging alone 45% reported being sad and 52% reported being lonely.

Because adults with children may effectively be solo if their adult children live far away or they have a child with a disability who can’t care for them, or they are estranged, more aging adults are looking elsewhere for support to increase their quality of life. 

Solo agers are vulnerable to social isolation although loneliness is a serious concern as all ages are found out during COVID. During the epidemic loneliness, isolation, and depression were experienced by everyone including kids who could not go to school. Seniors experience this all the time. Social isolation is associated with a multitude of problems, such as high blood pressure, insomnia, depression, and cognitive decline. If you lose the ability to drive, develop mobility issues, or live far from friends and family, Solo Agers may have very limited social interaction while aging in place. this a poor quality of life

Increase Quality of Life

Geriatric Care Managers can bring socialization, increase quality of life and so much more to Solo Agers.

Increasing Quality of Life socialization and networks of friends can help solo agers who are lonely. They can also help Solo Agers who are planning their aging plan to increase socialization to avoid pitfalls that so many seniors face in retirement- loneliness, isolation, and depression. The great thing about Solo Agers is that they are planning their aging, are highly educated and have the income for care managers, and can afford private care aging without Medicare covering long-term care

Solo Agers: Your Next Generation Client in the Upper 10)%

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Who are solo agers
Why you should know about them
What makes them unique as clients
What services you can offer them
How do you market to Solo Agers
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Filed Under: 3rd party targets, Blog, Concierge aging clients, Content Marketing, estranged elder parents and adult kids, FREE MARKETING WEBINAR, FREE WEBINAR, GCM Benefits, GCM Operations Manual, GCM Operations Manual Class, GCM Start-Up, GCM Webinar, geriatric care manager, geriatric care manager products, geriatric care manager start up, Geriatric Care Managers value, geriatric social worker, Marketing aging life care, Marketing Strategy, marketing to concierge clients, marketing to solo agers, marketing to the top 10$, marketing to upper 10%, nurse care manager, SEO for geriatric care managers, solo agers, Solo Agers and Care Managers, Solo Agers and Depressiom, Solo Agers and loneliness, Solo Agers as planners, Solo Agers Top 10%, Solo and Depressions Tagged With: aging life and geraitric care manager, Aging Life Care Association, aging life care start up, assessing for quality of life, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black geriatric care managers, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, care management business courses, elder depression, elder orphans, emotional quality of life, expert care manager, expert in care management, friendship and quality of life, geriatric care manager start up, isolation and elders, loneliness, Solo Agers, Solo Agers and friendship, Solo Agers and quality of Life, Solo Agers and social networks, start-up geriatric care management aging life care manager, training care managers

How to Capture Family Stories from Seniors on the Holidays

December 22, 2022

Thanksgiving--2003png.png

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.

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Benefits of Reminiscence, Black Aging Family, black care manager, black concieirge nurse, black concierge care manager, black concierge RN, Black Entrepreneur, Black Entrepreneur RB, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black entrepreneurs, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Black geriatric care managers, Black RN, black RN care manager, black social worker, black travel nurse, Black Travel Nurses, Black Travel RN, care management business, care manager, caregiver coaching, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, case manager, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional families, Concierge aging clients, Coronavirus safety elders, COVID -19 Safety, COVID & HOLIDAY SEASON, Covid 19 Webinar, Dementia Activities, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Dysfunctional Family Inquiry, elder care manager, Elder Reminicence on Thanksgiving, Emotional Quality of Life, Families, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long Distance Safety Travel COVID, Long Distance travel Holidays, New Years, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Oral History, Quality of Life, quality of life -COVID-19, Quality of Life and Reminicance, Quality of Life and Thanksgiving, Quality of Life for elders, quality of life in senior centers, Quality of Life with Dementia, Reminicence on Thanksgiving, Reminicence with elders, Reminiscence Therapy, Remote Thanksgiving Family Visit, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgiving Safe Visits to Grandma, Thanksgiving with COVID, Thanksgving visits during COVID, Therapist Specializing in Aging, Webinar Tagged With: aging family, aging family Thanksgiving, aging life care manager, aging parent, aging parent care, aging parent Thanksgiving, aging technology, ancrestory.com, assessing for quality of life, black aging family, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black caregivers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black Heirlooms, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black RN's, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, care manager, care plan, care plan interventions, case manager, COVID THANKSGIVING VISIT, COVID VIRTUAL THANKSGIVING VISIT, family caregivers, Family Caregivers using technology, genealogy, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, geritaric care manager, grandfather, grandmothers, grandparents, increasing quality of life, LCSW, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, oral history, oral history and quality of life, oral history and You Tube, parent care, Quality of Life, quality of life assessment, reminicence and elder, reminisicsence technology, story telling elders, storytelling and elders, technology for caregivers, Thanksgiving Webinar, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving with midlife siblings, You Tube, You Tube and storytelling

Do I Need Social Media for Holidays?

November 8, 2022

Do I Need Social Media?

Do I need Social Media to attract new clients during the coming holidays? Many have a solo practice and it is one more thing to do on top of marketing your business, managing clients paying bills – all overwhelming jobs?? Some geriatric care managers own flip phones and dig in their heels and say what is social media marketing going to do for my kind of business and do I really need it?

 

Social Media Main Plank of  Care Manager Marketing Strategy

 Social Media is so important, especially in the coming holidays -critically to reach long-distance care provider who visits aging family members to celebrate the holiday, where they find frightening signs of parents needing care. and then know to call you. It doesn’t matter if you run a solo practice or a big national company. Social media is an essential piece of your business marketing strategy. Now in this busiest season for care managers, you cannot consider skipping social media, especially   in a small business like care management 

Social platforms help you connect with your customers, increase awareness about your brand, and boost your leads and sales. With more than 4.1 billion people around the world using social media, it’s no passing trend.

4 Ways to Get More Clients With Social Media–

You need social media most importantly if you are just starting your aging life or geriatric care management business or want to grow the number of cases you have to grow and thrive, which you can over the holidays, the busiest season of the year for care managers. So, this is what you can do to get more customers to use your services. Write a blog

How

Choose Word Press or another blog software and set up an account to start positioning information to potential clients. The platform can add links to social media so you just post easily on your blog instead of going to each social media site to post. To get more help sign up for my holiday webinar on technology 

 

 

 

          

How

Design the format (they have templates), write content, publish on a least a monthly basis, and consider services like Constant Content  

 

3. Open twitter Facebook, Linked in Pinterest Accounts

 

Sign up and learn how to use social media. Best if on your website and automatically posts

 Services needed to complete

4. Join Linked in for professional referrals: Develop a Profile, get testimonials, and join Linked in groups like Aging Life Care Asso  group 

Create a Facebook fan page for your GCM business 

Learn to use Pinterest for your business 

Create a Twitter account for your business  

Join Instagram for business

Sign -up for Google My Business 

5. Lack of Social Media Skills No Time to do? Hire Expert

If you feel you do not have the time or the skills to do this- very likely for folks over a certain age- we did not grow up with this language- hire someone to do this or best bet a grandchild.

You can also have a professional create marketing content, newsletters, and blogs for you using businesses 

To get more help sign up for my holiday webinar on technology 

 

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

Sign up for my holiday webinar on technology

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        

 

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 Family, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, ALCA & Free PR, ALCA & Radio interview, ALCA Marketing, ALCA Public Relations, ALCA sales, ALCA software, ALCA start-up business, Blog, care management start-up, care manager, case manager, elder care manager, Families, GCM Start -Up, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long distance caregiver, long distance caregiver burnout, long distance holiday social media, LONG DISTANCE HOLIDAY VISIT, Long Distance travel Holidays, Marketing aging life care, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Social Media, Social Media for Care managers, Social Media for eldercare, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Third Party Referral, Webinar Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging life care on holidays, aging life or geriatric care manager, aging life or geriatric care marketing plan, aging parent crisis, black aging family, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black RN's, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, care management holiday, care manager, care manager social media, case manager, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional Holiday, dysfunctional family holidays, Dysfuntional family on holidays, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Social media, holidays, Holidays with midlife siblings, Marketing, new clients holiday, nurse advocate, pre-holiday socoal media, social media, social media for elder care, social media marketing

How to Help Avoid a Cat and Dog fight Among the Dysfunctional Family On Holidays

November 1, 2022

cat-dog-fight.jpg

Sparring Cats and Dogs AKA Siblings

Learn how to calm the chaos of the dysfunctional family on the holiday.  During the coming holiday season, especially after some liquid cheer, sour step-parents, angry step-siblings, and mid-life adult kids who grew -up in a dysfunctional family can spin into sparring cats and dogs with teeth bared at Thanksgiving Hannaka, Christmas dinner. Sign -up for my  holiday webinar

 Why Their Stocking is Full of Coal

As if COVID has not made the holidays hard enough for family gatherings, the ordinary

 

aging processes are made far tougher when a family has a history of dysfunction. The holidays are red meat for a dysfunctional family. Aging professionals, like geriatric care managers, have their greatest challenges in working with these “difficult” families.

Dysfunctional families are not able to organize themselves

Dysfunctional Familiy on the holidays

They effectively face gut-wrenching eldercare challenges and crises. These families are under more stress as they move from long-established roles into uncharted territory. the dysfunctional family on holidays like Thanksgiving can face an emotional detonation then an explosion with siblings laying into each other not the turkey.

 Why Cut-OFF Ruins the Celebration 4The Dysfunctional family on holidays

The dysfunctional family on the holidays faces shunning or cutoff. What if adult kids “ cut off” their Dad years ago and now he had a severe stroke- what do they do when caught between I hate you and now I love you. One sibling has taken over Mom or Dad’s care and her/his dysfunctional midlife adult siblings just don’t want her to do this. It only takes a few drinks at dinner  and snarky remarks start a fracas that leads to cut-off, which leads to them not sharing in Mom’s care, overloading the sibling caregiver, and endangering Mom’s care, through this shunning.

 

Now that the holidays are soon arriving – they have the same attitude about attending the family Thanksgiving dinner.

 

 

Dysfunctional family on holidays

SIGN UP FOR MY FREE HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

 

WEDNESDAY, November 16th, 2022, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

 Learn how to create marketing to alert adult children you are there

  • Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers
  • Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
  • Pre-Holiday e-newsletters, podcasts, speakers bureau, blogs-to market

Learn clinical skills to covert and tools to serve frantic adult children and their declining, resistant parents and the dysfunctional family on the holiday

  • How to sell services to desperate post-holiday callers from Normal dysfunctional & long-distance family
  • How to use tools to contain sibling 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 the dysfunctional family or nearly normal family during the holidays
  • Featuring

 Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management        

 

 

  • Dysfunctional family on holidays

 

 

SIGN UP FOR MY FREE HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Filed Under: ADULT SIBling, Aging, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, black care manager, black concieirge nurse, black concierge care manager, black concierge RN, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Blog, Care Management Inquiry Call, care manager, case manager, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, estranged siblings, Families, GCM Sales, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday Rush Technology, Holiday season, Holiday Sibling Rivalry, Holiday Social Media, Holiday Webinar, Holidays, inquiry call, Long Distance Care, Long Distance Care Holidays, Long distance caregiver, Marketing during Holidays, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, POST HOLIDAY CALLS, POST HOLIDAY SEASON, SIBLING, sibling rivalry, Sibling Strife Holidays, Sibling Strife Thanksgiving, Siblings, Social Media Holidays, social media marketing, technology for long distance care, Telehealth with GCM, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving & dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving and COVID, THANKSGIVING BLOG, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgiving Safe Visits to Grandma, Therapist Specializing in Aging, Webinar Tagged With: aging dysfunctional family, aging family, aging life care manager, aging life care on holidays, aging parent care, aging parent Thanksgiving, alcohol on the holidays, black aging family, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black geriatric care managers, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, care manager, case manager, COVID THANKSGIVING VISIT, danger signs for holiday visit, drunken holiday, dysfunctional family on the holiday, dysfuntional family, Dysfuntional family on holidays, GRANDMA VISIT THANKSGIVING, Holiday sibling rivalry, Holidays Crisis in aging family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, post holiday parent care, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Webinar, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving with midlife siblings

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