Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

Using Multiple Interventions for One Care Plan Problem

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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.

 

PBS series ” Taking Care” Begins

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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.

GCM Tools for the Aging Family

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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.

 

 

Enhancing Quality of Life Through Senior Centers

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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.

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