Dysfunctional Aging Families Can Wreak Havoc at End of Life

February 18, 2021

What do Feuding families do at the end of life?

When a family member is facing death and dying dysfunctional families have flawed conversations. Often they do not communicate at all or engage in destructive banter. They see one another as enemies. They demonize one another.

Feuding families are what I call dysfunctional families. They blame each other instead of locking arms in a crisis.

They sabotage resolution.

They actively compound already difficult decisions with intractable, interpersonal conflict. They create problems independent of the underlying issues.

Facing Fractured Communication

What are some of the struggles that these aging dysfunctional families with fractured communication can face?

Aging parents who lack the capacity to make decisions have no advance directives, DPOA and a

health-care proxy, and adult siblings, who must make end of life decisions, can’t agree

Withdrawal of life support with no designated health care agent and adult children and/or spouse disagree

Pain management adult children and/or and spouse disagree.

Answer to Fractured Family at End of Life – Mediation.

Mediation is a tool that can be a good resource for dysfunctional families at the end of life. It can help with these difficult families face the death of a parent without fracturing the entire family. It can allow an older person to die without pain inflicted by their own family.

Deliver a Good End of Life- Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

Serve Your Client Until Death Do You Part

Join me Thursday, March 11, and learn why End of Life Services Are a perfect new service for care managers

In this 1 ½ -hour webinar you will learn how to

1.Transition the patient/family through the five stages of death

2.Help clients be active participants in their care

3.Give the family/caregiver tools to manage care

4. Provide family center care to caregiver and family

5. Choose the right support services through all stages of death

6.Introduce Hospice and Palliative care and work with their team

7. Use ALCA End of Life Benefits During COVID

8.Use COVID -19 Family Coaching for GCM

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If you really want to add End of Life to your care management business sign up for this webinar now

Care Manager’s Role In Death and Dying

March 31, 2014

Care Manager’s don’t just meet dying patients and their bereft children in the emergency room.

Geriatric Care Managers play a big role in end of life issues. They are their navigators through all five stages of dying, many times long before palliative care or hospice are called. Often GCM’s can help the family and client to bring in hospice or palliative care.

The final passage through life can emotionally charged. If the family is following a long labyrinth to the end, the blind alleys may be blocked by cultural, religious, and moral beliefs. GCM ‘s can find an opening through this maze. Money, family dynamics and fear of dying can all explode a fraught crisis of care in dying. When important end of life decisions need to be made, the stress of the responsibility, and the seriousness of the situation can break a wave of distress fear and anxiety over the “ whole family system” the dying elder. The geriatric care manager specializes in this whole family system.

Geriatric Care managers are often help facilitate throbbing discussions, and facilitate family members coming together to work as a functional unit. Understanding the differing viewpoints is critical. Knowing what a parent wants and does not want during the last days and hours of life help define and simplify the role of family. It relieves the family of the burden of having the responsibility of making decisions which may not be what their parents want. Turning this around can also avoid family conflicts when adult children may have differing values.

Proactive discussions and legal planning building a circle of care can help to reduce some of the potential conflicts. Good legal guidance can also help to pay for care when an adult child wants to finance in home care. But geriatric care managers do much more with clients and families who are facing end of life.

Areas to Cover in Whole Family Assessment- Sandwich Generation Issues

June 11, 2013

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Sandwich Generation Issues- Many family caregivers have multiple generations requiring their attention and care. In 1981, Dorothy Miller coined the term sandwich generation to refer to inequality in the exchange of resources and support between generations.

Specifically, Miller was referring to a segment of the middle-aged generation that provides support to both young and older family members yet does not receive reciprocal support in exchange. Miller emphasized the unique stressors of multigenerational caregiving and the lack of community resources available to assist the middle generation. Because multigenerational caregivers are most often women dealing with the complex role configurations of wife, mother, daughter, caregiver, and employee, some researchers use the phrase women in the middle interchangeably with the sandwich generation.

In 2013 this is more and more an issue with men – adult sons as well. I am now helping a family where the 93 old Dad is home dying at his son’s home with Hospice and an excellent geriatric care management agency Livhome supplying 24 hour care. The adult son has four grown sons and three grandchildren. In all we have 4 generations sandwiched together helped thankfully by an excellent Hospice and terrific geriatric care management agency. These agencies together and in unison help unlayer the sandwich and allow the whole family to come together to bring joy to all their lives while they surround this great grandfather through his death . That’s the grace of the whole family approach to me .

Mediation at End of Life -Cathy Cress Speaking

April 7, 2013

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On April 19, 2013 I will be making a presentation-,at the 29th Annual National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers Conference in Philadelphia. I will be speaking along with attorney and mediator Dana Curtis .

The topic is , GCM as the Accidental Mediator: Fretting and Fighting or Feuding: Intergenerational Conflict in the Adult Family at End of Life, Philadelphia, Penna.

Undue Influence- New York Times

March 28, 2013

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New York Times article -Undue influence – perhaps -committed on a renowned painter Merton D. Simpson and major collector of African art . Mr. Simpson is dead and housed in funeral home until someone pays for funeral. Aging professionals- you just never have seen it all.

Care Manager’s Role In Death and Dying

Areas to Cover in Whole Family Assessment- Sandwich Generation Issues

Mediation at End of Life -Cathy Cress Speaking

Undue Influence- New York Times

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