Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Enhancing Quality of Life Through Senior Centers

May 29, 2018

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Senior Centers have a whole new face in 2018

Senior Centers , now provide revamped, hip classes and exciting structured events for elders,   On top of that they still offer old fashion opportunities to increase the quality of life for older adults. These innovative programs can  include new/age for older people adaptive yoga,  to increase  physical  health and at the same time social interactions that may lead to  emotional and physical connections for elders

 

In Santa Cruz California, a city famous for it’s surfing, Lifespan 35-year-old care management agency, has added a game-changing program, their Well Being product. To enhance the quality of life they offer the services of personal assessments to increase the emotional, physical, spiritual or intellectual quality of life of an elder. Older people are often lost in retirement, having left the world of work and trying to fill the void with new friends and new ways to spend their time and finding joy in each day. If they have problems doing this on their own, it can result in depression, self-isolation and physical problems.

Lifespan’s Well Being Program care manager designs a care plan for each Well Being Client that takes their interests, physical and mental abilities and wishes for new things to do or old favorites to resurrect and designs a activities plan that uses among other resources in the community use seniors centers. Seniors centers in Santa Cruz, California, offer innovative programs that seniors are excited to join like Tai Chi, Qui  Gong, boomer yoga,

 

If you are a geriatric care manager or an aging professional , think of adding senior centers and quality of life to your plan of care.Find this need through a quality of life assessment You will create a win-win care plan- for both the elder and the adult children’s emotional quality of life— Really – for the whole aging family.

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, care manager, Care Plan, case manager, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Quality of Life, Quality of Life for elders Tagged With: aging family, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, Area Agency on Aging, assessing for quality of life, care monitoring, care plan as saftey net, care planning, case manager, elders emotional quality of life, Geriatric Assessment, geriatric care managers, Quality of Life, quality of life assessment, reminicence and elder, senior centers, senior centers and intergenerational programs

Using Multiple Interventions for One Care Plan Problem

August 19, 2013

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The Geriatric Care Manager can recommend more than one intervention to solve a single problem. For example, an additional intervention to assist our GCM You Tube client, Mrs. Sterling to accept care could be as follows: The problem of Mrs. Sterling is resistant to care: Mrs. Sterling needs care but has resisted care because she wants her daughter to do the care and wants to save her estate for her special needs son

Intervention:

The multiple interventions the Sterling family problem are

a. Geriatric care manager to hold family meeting in one week to discuss this problem with adult children and discuss hiring financial planner and elder law attorney to help solve problems and accept older son’s offer to pay for mother’s care if paid back after her death.

b. If siblings accept plan for involvement of financial planner and elder law elder, they will prepare financial plans and legal documents to have Bob, willingly lend his mother the money for care on the condition he will get it back in his inheritance.

c. Elder law attorney to meet with Mrs. Sterling and with her consent set up a Special Need’s Trust for son Michael.

Because older clients often have chronic disease, the absence of disease or cure for problem or return to normal is rarely a goal. Mrs. Sterling’s problem for paying for needed care takes multiple, creative interventions to create a care plan for the family. These interventions are written in a way that the GCM ,Mrs. Sterling the client and  her family can measure whether they were completed and doable.

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: care monitoring, care plan, care plan interventions, care planning, geriatric care manager

PBS series ” Taking Care” Begins

May 31, 2013

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PBS series Taking Care – PBS News Hour Series on Long-Term Care in America on caregiving features excellent first segment  segment on mothers and daughters  showing why the Whole Family Approach is so important in aging.  The series is sponsered by the SCAN Foundation a-profit public charity devoted to transforming health care for seniors in ways that encourage independence and preserve dignity.

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging parent, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, Aging Professional communication with adult siblings, Alzheimers, Area Agency on Aging, assessing the caregiver, care monitoring, care plan, care plan interventions, caregiver assessment, caregiver burnout, caregiver overwhelm, caregiver stress, Cognitive Assessment, Continuum of Care, cost of long term care, early Alzheimers, Geriatric Assessment, geriatric care managers, long term care, Medicare, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, parent care crisis, PBS, PBS series Taking Care, SCAN Foundation, senior centers, Senior Information and Referral, stress and burden

GCM Tools for the Aging Family

May 22, 2013

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Geriatric Care Managers (GCM’s) solve the problems of older people and aging families with tools of geriatric assessment and care plans. They unravel the changing needs of older clients and their family and private and family caregivers by regularly monitoring and assessing their needs.

GCMs have what I call a “ Whole Family” approach. With the “Whole Family” tool, the GCM serves the older client but also organizes the aging family and midlife siblings to work as a team to support the older person. Now that the family is no longer Ozzie and Harriet and  has morphed into the extended family ( Modern Family)- this is vital. Stepsibling adult children can cut off other siblings or step parents and fracture the potential  to field a family team This takes viewing the family system  with an assessment labeled a family genogram, which can measure who is relating to whom and who is cut off from whom.  GCM’s then help reorganize the aging family to support them to share the care for the older person.

This support to the family by the GCM is especially given to the designated family caregiver, as they provide direct care to the older client and may make decisions about care. GCM’s also may also oftem provide support  a long distance care provider .Giving direct hands on care  or long distance care can spiral into caregiver stress and burnout. A GCM will use a caregiver assessment tool to measure caregiver strain, which often spins an aging family into chaos.

 

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging family, aging parent, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, assessing the caregiver, Care Managers Working with the Aging Family, care monitoring, care plan, care plan interventions, care planning, caregiver burden, caregiver burnout, caregiver overwhelm, caregiver stress, caregiving family members, case manager, geraitric assessment, geraitric care manager, geriatric care management, informal caregiver, informal supports of an older person, LCSW, long distance care provider, long distance caregiver, Marriage and Family Therapist, My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers Conference, whole family approach in aging

Enhancing Quality of Life Through Senior Centers

April 27, 2013

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Senior Centers ,which provide drop-in opportunities and structured events, can provide great openings for older adults to have social interactions that may lead to friendships. Friendships can really increase their emotional quality of life- at any age- but particularly old age. Many schools and day care centers also have inter-generational programs with senior centers , where older adults can spend time with children, each enjoying the special gifts the other brings to the exchange. Any time you combine children and older adults –magic happens. That magic is the enhanced emotional quality of life of both the older person and the child. Children, grandchildren, great grandchildren bring luster to an elder’s life.They also, pretty much at any age bring technology.

At 68, I would put myself in this category . Just being with my twin grandsons for their birthday last week infused happiness into my entire being.My two year old grandson turned on I tunes on my I phone. Only he- the two year old –knew how to turn the music off.

If you are a geriatric care manager or an aging professional , think of adding senior centers and inter-generational programs to your plan of care.Find this need through a quality of life assessment You will create a win win care plan- for both  the elder and  the children’s  emotional quality of life— Really – for everyone.

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging family, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, Area Agency on Aging, assessing for quality of life, care monitoring, care plan as saftey net, care planning, case manager, elders emotional quality of life, Geriatric Assessment, geriatric care managers, grandchildren, Grandchildren using technology with elders, grandfather, intergenerational program, National Assocaition of Geraitric Care Managers, Quality of Life, quality of life assessment, reminicence and elder, senior centers, senior centers and intergenerational programs

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