Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Caregiver Assessment- Can it Prevent Caregiver Burnout?

October 3, 2019

Caregiver Burnout is Big Federal Problem

Family caregivers are so many times in a complete state of caregiver burnout. From a policy perspective, the federal government and the long-term care system in the United State cannot afford to neglect the burnout and strain of millions of Americans caregivers any longer.

Despite the rewards caregivers get from giving care we know from years of research that being a family caregiver results in brutal losses. These degradations and deficits include role conflict and overload from the never-ending tasks demanded of a caregiver. Left in a permanent state of worry and anxiety much of the time, caregivers are working in a deteriorating and unpredictable situation.

Caregivers Feel Trappedchannel_caregiver_burnout.jpg

Caregivers can feel entrapped by there the restrictions on their own life. They are often beset by fiscal worries because they are not paid except in some states, like California under Medicaid. Yet the caregiving situation explodes in cost through medical bills, medical equipment and informal care that must be brought in, if the family can afford it.

Caregivers Are Not Attorneys

Family caregivers face a quagmire of legal problems including untangling wills, trusts, and inheritance issues which generally complicate care both emotionally and physically. Many times these family caregivers compound their fiscal woes by having to quit their job, running the risk of never being hired again, and that is if they can eventually return to work.

Caregivers Mental Health Ravaged

The caregivers own physical and mental health is often ravaged. They have to do medical tasks that years ago family caregivers never had to do. If they were paid by an agency, this would be a workman’s compensation nightmare for the company, yet these family caregivers are never even paid. So it is time that geriatric care managers and other professionals in aging started to respond to this family caregiver nightmare and use a caregiver assessment every time they assess an older client tended by a family caregiver.

Find out more in the YouTube below from My Geriatric Care 1 Channel.

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, aging family crisis, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, care manager, caregiver assessment, caregiver burnout, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, elder care manager, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Webinar Tagged With: aging parent care, aging parent crisis, assessing the caregiver, caregiver, caregiver assessment, caregiver burnout, caregiver overload, caregiver overwhelm, caregiver stress, caregiving family members, case manager, elder care crisis, Functional Assessment, geraitric assessment, Geriatric Assessment, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, informal caregiver, Marriage and Family Therapist, My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual, stress and burden

How to Assess the Caregiver and Avoid Hospital Readmission

September 6, 2019

 

Assessing the Family Caregiver is a new but crucial concept for geriatric care managers and professionals in aging.As geriatric care managers and aging professional, we are health and social services oriented. For almost 3 decades we have assessed the care receiver for problems with function, social connection, and psychological issues. If we suspect depression we have completed that screen. If our client plans to move, has cultural needs and preferences, exhibits signs of dementia, need ways to improve quality of life or a spiritual connection, we have assessed the care receiver for those problems.

All our assessments have left out the major fact – care is an exchange. To receive care, the patient/client usually needs a family caregiver to give or supervise it. That family caregiver is the glue that holds it all together and his or her inner bond begins to break with the strain of caring.

Other countries have seen what the US has yet to grasp. In the United Kingdom, a seminal law passed in 1995 called the Recognition and Services Act , which provided British caregivers a statutory right to request an assessment at the same time that a frail elder or adult with disabilities is assessed.

So developing a caregiver assessment is critical, especially in this era of penalties to hospitals for readmission. The caregiver is the key to keeping an older person in the community and not back in the hospital. If they are not trained, have physical problems that inhibit caring, find some tasks, like changing adult diapers uncomfortable, have no car to pick up meds or drive to the doctor’s follow up an appointment, you have a problem and probably a readmission.

Learn how to do a caregiver assessment along with a care receiver assessment .This will help you keep your aging client both out of the hospital and potentially out of inappropriate placement in a skilled nursing facility. Plus you will learn just not how to assess caregiver burnout but be able to create a care plan that will help your family caregiver have a better quality of life while they giver better care to their loved one. Read the chapter ” Assessing the Caregiver ” in my book Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family, Jones and Bartlett. The price has just been cut in half to make it more affordable for the practitioner.

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, caregiver, caregiver assessment, case manager, elder care manager, Families, GCM Start -Up, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, home care, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Private Duty Home Care, Quality of Life Tagged With: aging parent, aging parent care, caregiver assessment, caregiver burnout, caregiver family meeting, caregiver overload, caregiver overload with sisters, caregiving family members, caring for a yourself as a parent, case manager, elder care crisis, geraitric assessment, geriatric care management, geriatric care managers, geritaric care manager, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, parent care, Psychosocial assessment, red flags for a family meeting, stress and burden

Cat Burglar’s Stealing Retirement Funds Under the Trump Administration

January 8, 2018

I wrote a blog Saturday about families being the number one con artists in the game of elder fiscal abuse. Now I am going to bring in the big time thieves the- white-collar cat burglars of elder fiscal abuse

The so-called fiduciary rule,  which was scheduled to go into effect in April, would have required financial advisers working with retirement accounts to put the interests of their clients ahead of their own—

Brokers are currently allowed to follow a less-stringent “suitability” standard, which lets them recommend options that cost seniors more—and pay them more—even if a cheaper or more appropriate choice is available.

The Trump administration “blocked this rule and continues to block many retiring and aging client interests – putting them second and financial advisors interest (or ) profit first. This rule was supposed to go into effect January first, 2018 but was blocked again until 2019″

 

 

The rule’s dogged attack force has been led by Gary Cohn-president of Goldman Sachs before he became Mr. Trump’s top economic adviser. So, this is a pure Wall Street heist to hijack elders highly lucrative accounts.

In addition, the Wall St. Journal story reports that many of the comments made to the rule, are fake, bringing  even more fears of government fraud and outside corrupt amputation to the democratic process that seems to slipping away

A care manager’s clients are most often affluent seniors in the top 10%, these clients will be affected by this delay in implementation, steering funding away from care into the coffers of Wall Street.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, Concierge Senior, elder fiscal abuse, Fiscal Elder Abuse, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, elder care crisis, elder fiscal abuse, Fiduciary Rule, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse care manager, Trump Administration

How to Assess the Caregiver and Avoid Hospital Readmission

October 1, 2017

 

Assessing the Family Caregiver is a relatively new but crucial concept for geriatric care managers and professionals in aging.As geriatric care managers and aging professional, we are health and social services oriented. For almost 3 decades we have assessed the care receiver for problems with function, social connection, and psychological issues. If we suspect depression we have completed that screen. If our client plans to move, has cultural needs and preferences, exhibits signs of dementia, need ways to improve quality of life or a spiritual connection, we have assessed the care receiver for those problems.

All our assessments have left out the major fact – care is an exchange. To receive care, the patient/client usually needs a family caregiver to give or supervise it. That family caregiver is the glue that holds it all together and his or her inner bond begins to break with the strain of caring.

Other countries have seen what the US has yet to grasp. In the United Kingdom, a seminal law passed in 1995 called the Recognition and Services Act , which provided British caregivers a statutory right to request an assessment at the same time that a frail elder or adult with disabilities is assessed.

So developing a caregiver assessment is critical, especially in this era of penalties to hospitals for readmission. The caregiver is the key to keeping an older person in the community and not back in the hospital. If they are not trained, have physical problems that inhibit caring, find some tasks, like changing adult diapers uncomfortable, have no car to pick up meds or drive to the doctor’s follow-up an appointment, you have a problem and probably a readmission.

Learn how to do a caregiver assessment along with a care receiver assessment.This will help you keep your aging client both out of the hospital and potentially out of inappropriate placement in a skilled nursing facility. Plus you will learn just not how to assess caregiver burnout but be able to create a care plan that will help your family caregiver have a better quality of life while they giver better care to their loved one. Read the chapter ” Assessing the Caregiver ” in my book Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family, Jones and Bartlett. The price has just been cut in half to make it more affordable for the practitioner.

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, caregiver, caregiver assessment, case manager, elder care manager, Families, GCM Start -Up, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, home care, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Private Duty Home Care, Quality of Life Tagged With: aging parent, aging parent care, caregiver assessment, caregiver burnout, caregiver family meeting, caregiver overload, caregiver overload with sisters, caregiving family members, caring for a yourself as a parent, case manager, elder care crisis, geraitric assessment, geriatric care management, geriatric care managers, geritaric care manager, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, parent care, Psychosocial assessment, red flags for a family meeting, stress and burden

How Can You Improve Your Midlife Sibling Relationship Post Labor Day

September 5, 2017

 

 

Did you spend Labor Day with midlife and care of your aging parents came up. Did you wake with a horrible hangover- either from too much booze or just amplified emotional tension that turns you inside out next morning.

Perhaps it involved arguments over aging parent care? If dealing with your siblings gives you a royal headache, the tension may have been made worse by the conflagration of alcohol and /or age old rifts between you and your siblings that started in childhood.

It may be time to look into the roots of your family script before your parents do need care or if they need care now.

Did your step, half or blood sibling do something long ago that’s still a weeping wound in your mind? Does it keep you apart or in each other’s faces –  – especially awkward- during a holiday gathering when families were flocking together consuming mounds of barbecue & pot luck food and sharing old stories or recent family news

If the main villain in the family tragedy is a sibling or step sibling or half sibling – here’s a post-Labor Day quiz to see if you need help from someone like a geriatric care manager 

.

Find out if have a sibling “ I Hate You Story”. Maybe you did not think you needed this test few weeks ago. Post Labor Day – if you know you need the test now- here it is.

Take the test below.

1. Have you told your sibling story more than once to the same person?

2.  Do you play the sibling events more than two times in a day in your mind?

3. Do you find yourself speaking to the sibling who hurt you even when the person is not there?

4. Have you made a commitment to yourself to tell the sibling story without being upset then found yourself agitated anyway?

5. Is the sibling who hurt you a central character in your story?

6. When you tell your sibling story does it remind you of other painful things that happened to you?

7. Does the sibling story focus primarily on your pain and what you lost?

8. In your sibling story is there a villain?

9. Have you made a commitment not to tell the sibling story again and then broken your vow?

10. Do you look for other people with similar sibling problems to tell your story to?

11. Has your sibling story stayed the same over time?

12. Have you checked the details of your sibling story for accuracy?

If you answer yes to five or more the questions, there is a good chance you have a sibling I Hate You “ story. To end brother or sister blood step or half sibling blood feud and make peace makes forgiveness as a  gift to you.

Try a change of season resolution and welcome autumn by taking the – a step towards sibling forgiveness and parent care with the help of a geriatric care manager to hopefully make the next holiday, sometimes the dreaded Thanksgiving with siblings will be spent hangover free with the parent care issue resolved

Professionals Check out my book Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family , with it’s chapter Working With Adult Aging Siblings Jones and Bartlett, to learn more about working with feuding midlife siblings.

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, Care Plan, Dysfunctional aging family, elder care manager, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Siblings Tagged With: aging family, aging parent crisis, blood sibling, Cain and Abel, celebrations with siblings, elder care crisis, favorite sibling, geriatric care manager, geriatric care managers, half-sibling, Labor Day, manning the barbecue, midlife sibling crisis, midlife sibling team, Mom Loves You Bes Forgiving and Forging Sibling Relationships, sibling, siblings fighting, step sibling, victim, villian

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