family caregiver stress Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

How Do Long Distance Families Cope with Elders Threatened by COVID-19

July 19, 2020

Caring for COVID-19 Risk From a Distance

Long-Distance Family caregivers are trying to get a handle of the new reality COVID 19 has on their lives. as caregivers, at a distance. For many families, the number one concern is the seniors in their family. As a Long-Distance Care provider, finding the balance between safety and well -being for seniors during the COVID 19 pandemic can be a new challenge added to the many overwhelming challenges that long-distance families face daily. Care managers can now overcome the distance with telehealth and Hipaa certified telehealth platforms.

Long-Distance Care Providers Already offer the Most Expensive Care and Now COVID-Care $

They already live far away from their loved one, a national average of 450 miles, and travel an average of 4-7 hours to give care. Long-distance caregivers have the highest annual expenses (about $8,728) compared to co-resident caregivers (about $5,885) or those who care for a loved one nearby.

The experience of a long-distance caregiver is much different from and more complicated than that of a caregiver who lives in the same town. It’s important to know the local resources and services. Long-distance care providers are either not familiar or have vague memories of stores and resources that have changed since they moved away.

Long-Distance Caregivers Suffer Depression, Anxiety and Now Fear of COVID

The crunch of caregiver demands frequently leads to depression, anxiety, and a feeling of helplessness. Caregiver overload is especially common among the long-distance sandwich generation, or those caring for their distant aging parents along with their own children and many times grandchildren. Long-distance caregivers are more likely to report emotional distress (47%) than caregivers either residing with their care recipient (43%) or residing less than one hour away (28%).

Neglecting Everyone in the family

When the long-distance caregiver tends to ailing parents, they feel they are neglecting their own family and work responsibilities. Yet when they tend to their family, spouse, or job, they feel they are neglecting their parents. They live in a double bind.

Keeping seniors safe yet socially connected

For most families, keeping senior loved ones safe coronavirus infection is their number one priority as it is with families that live locally. But Long Distance Families must do this remotely which means forgoing in-person visits and finding other ways to create a connection. These families their number one concern is the safety of the seniors among their families or friends. It is important to find a balance between safety to avoid contracting coronavirus and being able to maintain happiness through social interactions with family and friends.

Seniors and their concerned families want to avoid isolation, depressions, and hospitalization with COVID while sheltering in place.

Like any disaster but especially with this pandemic- you may not be prepared and are desperately seeking a plan.

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Family Systems Theory key to Caregiver Assessment

September 13, 2019

The reason to assess the caregiver is based on Family systems theory

Care receiver’s ( older client’s )and caregiver’s are a system. Like all systems if you change one part it changes the other part. So if you as a care manager’s repair the caregiver’s problem, like caregiver stress or burnout or no family support from others ,you change the care receiver because they then get better care. The solution a care manager brings to the situation in the form of a care plan- defining the problems and offering solutions almost always involve working with the caregiver to make changes in the situation.

Look at exhausted caregiver Ms. Handy

If a client like our fictitious Mrs. Handy is so burned out from caring for her kids husband and difficult elderly father that she is about to place him you offer coaching to stop that placement. You coach Ms. Handy to ask her family for help. You coach her to be firm about her Dad going to bed earlier not at 1:00 AM when he often wakes her out of an exhausted sleep. How did you the care manager know to do this. You did a caregiver assessment. You fixed both problems with this powerful assessment.

If the problem is that the care receiver can’t remember to take his or her medications, it is usually the family caregiver who either sets up the meds or actually gives them. If those meds involve medications for anxiety on the care receiver’s part this may stop her from calling the family member over and over. So when you the family member tells the care manager that she is being driven crazy by her mother calling over and over, the daughter as caregiver is part of the problem and part of the solution that you as a care manager design. You suggest a medication reminder system and medication reminder service in the mother’s home to solve the problem. You also suggest a call from the daughter to her Mom to assure her she is there.

You are fixing the problem of her mother calling over and over, using the daughter to fix the mother’s problem that then fixes the daughter’s problem (many less calls.)

So using a caregiver assessment has usually a dual result of defining and finding a solution to an interaction between the caregiver and the care receiver.

Check my GCM Operations Manual with the complete service /product of Caregiver Assessment along with 13 other care manager products in a full menu of caregiver products services.

Genogram -Tools to Relieve a Family Caregiver-

September 9, 2019

What should be in your caregiver assessment toolbox?

A tool that you can tools use to solve the caregiver and care receiver’s problems you found in your care plan is a genogram.

A geriatric care managers assessment of the family caregiver is critical. Caregivers can and do fall apart. If you already did your caregiver assessment- great. But the extended family of the care receiver (client) should be assessed to find their strengths, weaknesses, dangers and real ability to help render caregiving services. This is where a genogram comes in.

A genogram allow you to see family patterns on a single page

Using a tool called a genogram can really show you the view of a family on a chart.Patterns in a family, especially the aging family that geriatric care managers and ALCA members serve, can be seen in a genogram showing you, for example, the generational cut off that happens over and over or alcoholism, or spousal abuse. You can see the weakness of family ties and where the care managers needed to focus to help the family get care for an older person.

A genogram allow you to see family support

A good genogram can be helpful in assessing the care receiver’s family support network and each relative’s relationship to the older client. Your genogram when paired with a psychosocial assessment, can help you assess whether the older client is living with a helpful spouse or partner, living with a difficult spouse, has relationship with an ex spouse, has cooperative and supportive children or grandchildren, has fighting or alienated children or grandchildren, has warring or alienated stepchildren or adoptive, has several children but only one child who “does it all,”.

In other words you pull up a traffic light, it is green, yellow or dangerous red. The genogram also can help tell the GCM whether you have ex spouses or partners who want to participate as caregivers and what their emotional relationship is the care receiver. In other words is there green-lighted support or red saying stop here-when the family caregiver desperately needs your GPS to find that that new road.

Family Caregivers No Spring Chickens- New York Times

July 9, 2015

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The New York Times ran a scathing story yesterday on the plight of family caregivers. They care for ones they love for free, while their own health crumbles. Everyone who reads this blog has or will be touched by this.

Free caregiver services were valued at $450 billion per year in 2009—up from $375 billion in year 2007. At $450 billion in 2011, the value of informal unpaid caregiving exceeded the value of paid home care, exceeded total Medicaid spending in 2009, exceeded Wal-Mart sales ($408 billion), and nearly exceeded total expenditures for the Medicaid program in 2009 ($509 billion).

What is overlooked in the Times article is an answer to this issue a ‘caregiver assessment”.

Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition out this fall, will have a new chapter on geriatric care managers doing ” caregiver assessments” and changing their life because, like Mrs. Swartz in the Times story, they are “NO Spring Chickens” and caring is harder on the caregiver than the care receiver.

Are There Tasks a Family Caregiver Hates to Do?

February 22, 2015

Family Caregivers No Spring Chickens- New York Times

Are There Tasks a Family Caregiver Hates to Do?

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