Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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End of Life-When Do You Need Mediation?

February 23, 2021

Why do some families need mediation at the end of life? Mediation is a voluntary process in which the parties, with the help of an impartial third party mediator, work together to resolve their differences or solve a problem they were unable to address satisfactorily without help. These family differences especially happen to dysfunctional families but can beset any family at the end of life. They are faced with overwhelming emotions and decisions that demand that the family work together as a team. What happens to dysfunctional and even nearly normal families during this trying time? They don’t gather as a team. They fight. They fret and they feud. What are the results of this fighting, fretting, and feuding in families at the end of life?                                        family-charis1-226x300.jpg

Unresolved family conflicts emerge

            Dysfunctional families become more dysfunctional

Family members’ grief, pain, and anxiety are often masked as anger and presents as conflict (past and present)                                                 

Older person dies without resolving important family issues

Older person dies in conflict, not in peace

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 

  • Transition the patient/family through the five stages of death     
  • Help clients be active participants in their care
  • Give the family/caregiver tools to manage care
  • Provide family center care to caregiver and family
  • Choose the right support services through all stages of death
  • Introduce Hospice and Palliative care and work with their team
  • Use ALCA End of Life Benefits During COVID
  • Use  COVID -19  Family Coaching for GCM
  • Sign Up    

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

 

Filed Under: Aging, aging life care manager, Death & Dying, Death and Dying Care Management, death and dying care manager, DNR, End of Life, End of Life Care manager, GCM role Death and Dying, geriatric social worker, Good Death, Hospice, Hospice Care, mediation, Mediation End of Life, Mediator, nurse care manager Tagged With: Advanced Directives, aging parent, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, ALCA care Manager, ALCA in End Of Life, disputes at end of life, dysfunctional aging family, dysfuntional family, elder mediation, end of life, end of life family meeting, facilitator, families fretting at end of life, family meeting, Fighting and Feuding at end of life, GCM mediator, geraitric care manager, Geriatric Assessment, geriatric care manager, geriatric care managers, Handbook of Geriatric Care Management third edition, mediation, mediation end of life, mediiator, My Geraitric Care Management Operations Manual, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, power of attorney for health care, siblings feuding, siblings fighting, step sibling family meeting

Do You Know How to Use Whole Family Approach to End of Life Issues ?

February 10, 2021

Family Working Together as a Unit

The whole family approach is critical with death and dying. Care managers are often engaged to help facilitate the discussions at end of life, and help family members come 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 the family. It relieves the family of the burden of having the responsibility of making decisions which may not be what their parents want, and can also avoid family conflicts when adult children may have differing values.” Proactive discussions and legal planning can help to reduce some of the potential conflicts.

Major Family Issues at End of Life

 I found myself with a family member dealing with end of life issues. The

issues were:  money as the elderly man would need to have 24-hour care to return home to die and where he would return home, as although the son was unsure, everyone agreed that the son’s home where all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren gathered was the best place.

The most important was should the elderly man withdraw dialysis and extreme measures that were not saving his life. He was competent and had chosen this. 

Issues  Solved by A FamilyMeeting

All, these problems were solved by two things. The man’s physicians helped him understand the dialysis would not save him from dying.  Then a family meeting with hospice and his care managed home care agency LivHome the son and his wife, and myself was set up using the whole family approach.

Hospice facilitated the discussion. The end result was to move to the son’s home, with 24-hour care and Hospice, where the entire family, were gathered in and out all day and the old man died a ” Good Death” knowing that his family surrounded him. 

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

Sign Up

 

 Gwendolyn LAZO Harris MA, CT, Seniors at Home, San Francisco and Diane LeVan MA both highly expert care managers, created a seminal chapter “Palliative Care and End of Life Care Manager ” in my book Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family 

Filed Under: Aging, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, case manager, Death and Dying Care Management, death and dying care manager, elder care manager, End of Life Care manager, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Palliative care manager Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, care manager, care plan interventions, caregiver, caregiver burden, caregiver family meeting, case manager, end of life, end of life care manager, end of life family meeting, family meeting, Geriatric Assessment, geriatric assessment for end of life, geriatric care manager, Hospice, National Assocaition of Geraitric Care Managers, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Palliative Care, parent care, parent care crisis

7 Tips to Make Labor Day Midlife- Sibling Stress Free

August 28, 2019

Dys-fam90264_CH22_FIG02.jpg

 

Happy Labor Day. 

If you are working with midlife siblings to solve elder care issues and they are attending a Labor Day barbecue-  

Here are 

Suggestions to make the ritual of Labor Day –  a holiday to be enjoyed by midlife siblings and their families  – not dreaded like the annual Thanksgiving dinner where Mom burns the turkey and your uncle gets drunk and sings. 

Here are 7 tips to help them keep the Labor Day heartburn free without a midlife sibling to build a midlife sibling team over aging Mom and Dad issues.

1) Don’t discuss politics. In this era of the Trump presidency with so many families at odds over President The Democratic Presidential Race ,Trump, the Russian hacking investigation, DOMA, the building of the ” Mexican Wall ” –politics can be lethal to families. Spare siblings, and guests. This is bloodier than the civil war with so many kin at opposite poles. So keep it positive and light or just plain pass the time of day. And whatever you do, don’t drink too much and forget the ban on politics.

2) Remember that it is a family gathering and it is not “all about you”.Suggest keeping a positive attitude for the sake of aging parents, if they are there,  and  kids, who will model bad sibling behavior when they face parent- care in the future

3) Call email or Facebook, Evite everyone ahead of time. Ask everyone to bring a dish to share. That is the beginning of building a sibling family team- sharing food. Call every midlife sibling and family member. Do not exclude. Again to build a team effort.

4) Attempt to get all midlife siblings to plan activities ahead and jointly work to make them happen-with a sibling team spirit. Think of softball games, horseshoes, and a treasure hunt, anything that everyone can have joint ideas about beforehand. Use Facebook to do this- hopefully, all your siblings are your Facebook friends.

5) Arrange to split the bill for beverages like alcohol and soft drinks, again sibling team effort. Remember to go light on alcohol because, like the recent Houston explosion caused by hurricane flooding, alcohol can detonate sibling warfare.

6) Share jobs- setting up tables, bringing in equipment for sports or games, lawn chairs- especially ‘manning” the barbecue. (Sisters can cook too) Share it and don’t let anyone be top dog –be the chosen chef, unless everyone is fine with that.This is again modeling a sibling team about helping an aging Mom and Dad.

6) It is a party, not a sibling family meeting. If you want to talk about personal issues, make a date in the future to get together with your angry sister/brother.

7) Don’t make this a family meeting where old sibling grudges get hashed out.It is a holiday.

IF you are an ALCA member or GCMCheck out the chapter ” Working With Adult Aging Siblings” by Cathy Cress and Kali C Peterson in  Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family – for a deeper dive into how to work with midlife siblings around aging parent care. 

Also, you could apply this to any labor day gathering with siblings and just leave out the aging parent issue.

HAVE A HAPPY LABOR DAY

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, care manager, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Siblings Tagged With: blood sibling, brother, Care Managers Working with the Aging Family, celebrations with siblings, Democartic party, drinking on labor day, family and politics, family meeting, Labor Day, Labor Day barbecue, mid-life siblings, midlife sibling, Mitt Romney, New Horizon Press, President Obama, sibling, siblings fights over politics, sister, tea party

7 Tips to Make Labor Day Midlife- Sibling Stress Free

September 1, 2017

Dys-fam90264_CH22_FIG02.jpg

 

Happy Labor Day. 

If you are working with midlife siblings to solve elder care issues and they are attending a Labor Day barbecue-  

Here are 

Suggestions to make the ritual of Labor Day –  a holiday to be enjoyed by midlife siblings and their families  – not dreaded like the annual Thanksgiving dinner where Mom burns the turkey and your uncle gets drunk and sings. 

Here are 7 tips to help them keep the Labor Day heartburn free without a midlife sibling to build a midlife sibling team over aging Mom and Dad issues.

1) Don’t discuss politics. In this era of the Trump presidency with so many families at odds over President Trump, Charlotteville, the Russian hacking investigation, DOMA, the building of the ” Mexican Wall ” –politics can be lethal to families. Spare siblings, and guests. This is bloodier than the civil war with so many kin at opposite poles. So keep it positive and light or just plain pass the time of day. And whatever you do, don’t drink too much and forget the ban on politics.

2) Remember that it is a family gathering and it is not “all about you”.Suggest keeping a positive attitude for the sake of aging parents, if they are there,  and  kids, who will model bad sibling behavior when they face parent- care in the future

3) Call email or Facebook, Evite everyone ahead of time. Ask everyone to bring a dish to share. That is the beginning of building a sibling family team- sharing food. Call every midlife sibling and family member. Do not exclude. Again to build a team effort.

4) Attempt to get all midlife siblings to plan activities ahead and jointly work to make them happen-with a sibling team spirit. Think of softball games, horseshoes, and a treasure hunt, anything that everyone can have joint ideas about beforehand. Use Facebook to do this- hopefully, all your siblings are your Facebook friends.

5) Arrange to split the bill for beverages like alcohol and soft drinks, again sibling team effort. Remember to go light on alcohol because, like the recent Houston explosion caused by hurricane flooding, alcohol can detonate sibling warfare.

6) Share jobs- setting up tables, bringing in equipment for sports or games, lawn chairs- especially ‘manning” the barbecue. (Sisters can cook too) Share it and don’t let anyone be top dog –be the chosen chef, unless everyone is fine with that.This is again modeling a sibling team about helping an aging Mom and Dad.

6) It is a party, not a sibling family meeting. If you want to talk about personal issues, make a date in the future to get together with your angry sister/brother.

7) Don’t make this a family meeting where old sibling grudges get hashed out.It is a holiday.

Check out the chapter ” Working With Adult Aging Siblings” by Cathy Cress and Kali C Peterson in  Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family – for a deeper dive into how to work with midlife siblings around aging parent care. 

Also, you could apply this to any labor day gathering with siblings and just leave out the aging parent issue.

HAVE HAPPY LABOR DAY

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, care manager, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Siblings Tagged With: blood sibling, brother, Care Managers Working with the Aging Family, celebrations with siblings, Democartic party, drinking on labor day, family and politics, family meeting, Labor Day, Labor Day barbecue, mid-life siblings, midlife sibling, Mitt Romney, New Horizon Press, President Obama, sibling, siblings fights over politics, sister, tea party

Moving Parent in- Functional Assessment- Organizing Family to Help With Caregiving

October 24, 2014

Dec-Xmas-all-of-us-.jpg

 

 

If the family members moving the older person to their home cannot render the level of care needed to deal with functional deficits, then the geriatric care manager can help assess the cost of care from a reliable private duty home care agency in their continuum of care. Hiring a home health care worker cost an average of $19.00 per hour or $29,640 annually.

 The cost of this cares many again be a deciding factor to move the elder in with the adult child.

 One great talent of a geriatric care manager is reorganizing the family so family members and friends can share the care. This would take a geriatric care manager facilitating a family meeting to outline the care tasks and schedule that need to be covered to care for the older person. Then the next agenda point would be discussing who could participate in the care giving. The final step is organizing a schedule, which can be done through many tech tools like Lots of Helping Hands . This care can be supplemented by adult day care in the community, attendance at senior centers. Geriatric care manager are experts of the continuum of care in the community so can find activities that can supplement the family care giving to create a low cost care plan to keep the older family member at their new home. This is an excellent way a geriatric care manager can help a family member who is willing to move an older relative in their home but does not have the money to pay for private duty care.

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: family meeting, Functional Assessment, geriatric care manager, Lots of Helping Hands

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