How Storytelling Can Give Elders A Happier Family Thanksgiving

November 21, 2020

Want to increase aging parents and everyone’s enjoyment at Thanksgiving? Try storytelling using Thanksgiving memories.

As an aging professional, you can bring joy to an older person through reminiscence, storytelling, and oral history even elders with dementia

This Thanksgiving, if you really do travel to a family home or grandma’s house, travel safely If not make the safest choice, stay home and use zoom and include your elderly

parent. You can do this if they can use a computer or have a family member or friend who visits often and who lives nearby and is in their bubble serve and share Thanksgiving dinner at their home and use zoom with them to see other family members on the holiday.

Share Your Thanksgiving Story

If you are at a family member’s holiday dinner, ask everyone to tell their favorite story about a Thanksgiving dinner. Start with midlife members to get the idea and then ask

again parents to share their story. It will bring extra thanks to Thanksgiving by learning about an elder’s past and giving them the opportunity to share, which sometimes they do not do in the hubbub of family talking.

The “telling ” also means someone documents. That magically gives the elder and a child social interaction and connectedness. Elders vividly recall their past by telling

from vignettes in their life – especially life in their 20’s, which sparks the richest recall called the “20’s bump”, according to researchers.

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

So try this at Thanksgiving and it becomes intergenerational. The older person is given a chance to give the larger picture of their life and family history to children and grandchildren or extended family, who may not have heard all the details of their grandparent’s or parents’ life before. My 10 grandchildren have grown up with their now 80-year-old grandfather telling them exciting stories of when he was a California Highway patrolman.So a dual dose of a higher quality of life for both the older person and the aging family is increased through oral history and reminiscence.

Capture Your Families Past Before It Is Gone

Many midlife adults now do ancestry and regret that they did not ask questions of older family members when they were alive. Capture that past now on this family holiday. An aging professional or a geriatric care manager can suggest family or friends record the Thanksgiving story as oral history using technology like an i Phone or i Pad.

StoryWorth For Thanksgiving

Another great idea to capture reminiscence when elders are safely sheltering in place is giving them StoryWorth.

Last Christmas my daughter, sent this gift to my her Dad and both he and I love it. Each week StoryWorth sends a question to my husband that prompts him to write about his past. He writes his reminiscence out longhand and I easily use the dictation on my phone and email his story to Story Worth.

At the end of the year, my daughter will order a bound book of all the stories- a whole collection of memories that she might never think to ask and will be saved for her and her children to pass on family history. I will order a copy for all her three siblings. Equally important, my husband, who has been sheltering in place since March with me, really enjoys writing about his past and the prompts have brought many vivid memories back to him.

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8 Ways to Tame the Turmoil of the Holidays & Twindemic in the Aging Family

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How to sell services to the desperate Aging Family during the holiday surge
How to give hope to frantic children who call when their aging parent struggling with Loneliness and isolation on the holidays
How to help the Aging Family make holiday visits remotely or safely in person
How to counsel the Aging Family to track aging decline &Twindemic risk in loved ones
How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
How to use financial forecasting to prepare for business growth during the holidays

Sidestep the Many Care Managers Who Do not know how to work with Dysfunctional family or do COVID Coaching of Aging Families so the client chooses you

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How Do You Brand Geriatric Care Management?

October 10, 2020

Branding is one of the most important parts of your marketing plan.

Do You understand how to create one for your company? Successful companies like Coca-Cola, Kleenex, and Band-Aid have one important thing in common: a strong brand. In fact, their brand names have become generic terms for all similar products in their niche. If you cut yourself, do you ask for a bandage or a Band-Aid? They are the ultimate brands. They have gone into the lexicon.

Geriatric Care Management and Aging Life are not so lucky.

What is a brand? – A brand is made in the mind, not manufactured in a plant” Understanding branding and how it significant it is to your GCM- start-up can mean success for your for profit’s geriatric care management business. Geriatric care management is not a well know brand nor is the new brand ALCA after 35 years.So your company has to do everything it can to get your own brand known in the area you serve. How? Although often associated with just advertising, your own branding is essential to everything your company puts in front of current and potential clients: business cards, brochures, web site, trade show booths, letterheads, e-newsletter, and so forth.

Branding Is About Managing People’s Image of Your Agency

You need to make sure that the image is one that is in line with your company values and the benefits your company provides. With geriatric care management that is about concierge care as you can only deliver services to the upper 10%.By taking the time to manage expectations and build positive gut feelings about your company, you establish yourself as a trusted leader in your market.

Your brand identity is built upon your key messages

Your messages are about the unique customer benefits that you provide, and the expectations you set for your target audience.

By consistently delivering the same symbols, messages, and design, you are reinforcing those messages, creating a link to your brand, and building an identity for your business that people will remember.

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MARKET LIKE YOUR BUSINESS DEPENDED ON IT DURING COVID

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As you are approaching the busiest season for care manager’s the holidays when families visit for the holiday and seeing their elderly parents skating on very thin aging ice

Learn care management marketing that works at all time but especially during COVID so you can:

Consult with and help client’s during COVID and post COVID

Convert Consultation into regular clients

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Do You Have Emergency Procedures For Coronavirus For Your Agency?

March 20, 2020

Do you have procedures for an emergency at your agency?

The coronavirus has put home care and geriatric care management agencies in a terrible bind. Most GCM ‘s or home care agencies had no emergency procedure in place for any disaster but even if they did a pandemic was not anticipated by almost anyone in the catalog of emergencies.

AGING LIFE CARE ASSOCIATION HELP WITH CORONAVIRUS

Now that it is upon us geriatric care managers can benefit from the Aging Life Care Association’s webinars on Zoom to help their ALCA and geriatric Care Management agencies. The ability of any care management agency, serving frail elders, to function despite an emergency is critical. For example for members the have an upcoming Webinar through Zoom-TAKING ON NEW CLIENTS WHILE BEING “QUARANTINED”, which is incredibly valuable

They offer a daily blog for geriatric care managers with updates on an ALCA of GCM Practice under the coronavirus threat and are much-needed resources in these highly traumatic times. With agencies unable to directly see clients in states where like California have imposed at Stay at Home order where geriatric care manager cannot see their clients except virtually and on top of that both care staff and care management staff may have come down with the virus, information about how to keep your agency going is invaluable. Membership in ALCA could be very valuable to geriatric care managers. If you join tell them I sent you.

NEED FOR AN EMERGENCY PLAN FOR EVERY DISASTER

An emergency plan for all emergencies is necessary for all geriatric care management and ALCA agencies. With massive hurricane Dorian lasting 2 weeks last year and the west once again facing massive wildfires, tornados already wreaking devastation this season and the polar vortex perhaps coming again next year-do you have emergency procedures?

Informal agency emergency procedures work in a start-up care management business but what if the solo practitioner is ill and out?

If illness, accident, some other unforeseen event overtakes an owner or manager, no emergency procedures can be suicide in an emergency, not to mention liability to your elderly clients.

You could be like these two GCM’s who lost their businesses in weather events that knocked them out.

PARADISE FIRE DEVASTATION OF A GERIATRIC CARE MANAGEMENT PRACTICE

GCM Jim Boyd of Paradise, California lost everything in the catastrophic fire in the town of Paradise, where he lived and practiced. He was trying to check on an aging client in Paradise, located in the midst of the Sierra forest when the huge forest fire immolated the entire town. Although a Go Fund Me started by the Aging Life raised almost $10,000 for Jim, he did not have enough to rebuild his home where he had his home-based GCM business. Then he and 90% of the residents of Paradise never returned.

Every geriatric care professional needs a formal, written backup plan that dictates action, should a disaster or emergency arise.

It ‘s necessary to assess your company’s risk of temporary or permanent service disruption if a disaster or emergency is experienced. This may seem an overwhelming task at first, but when you break it down into pieces, it becomes workable.

Learn about preparing for emergencies how you can prepare you, your clients and staff for disasters and absences of key personnel.

With pandemic’s, global warming’s effects causing floods, larger hurricanes, and the specter of more catastrophic weather events, you need to prepare now. Get the new Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition now– or out in Kindle or hardback with an excellent chapter on how to prepare your agency for disasters, plus forms to use, by GCM President Liz Barlow.

8 Ways to Make Reminiscence a Valentine’s Gift for Aging Clients Tomorrow

February 13, 2020

Want a perfect Valentines’s gift for aging clients?

You already have it. A great Valentine’s for your older client is you the care manager, caregiver or family member- using reminiscence to gather an elders’ memories.

Reminiscence isn’t new. Before the printing press, storytellers and bards were how history was recorded-

Oral storytellers gave us the Odyssey and other oral tales. History exists in a family, and Ulysses or Penelope might be sitting in their home on Valentines’ Day- in the form of your aging clients.

But storytelling or reminiscence only works if the teller remembers the lines. Family history has to be captured when the older person still remembers. So holiday events are a perfect time to tap into that font before it flickers or dries up.

Capture Reminiscence

Here are some tips to use if you want to capture these family tales during Valentine’s visit with older clients—a perfect time to do this before age or dementia wipe their history.

Give Valentine’s gift each week of the year. Use StoryWorth. My daughter Kali Peterson Murphy, who is also in aging as a Program Officer, with the SCAN Foundation, purchased this as a Holiday gift for my husband and her Dad Pete. I love this as a user and a Geriatric care manager. Each week it prompts Pete to answer a question that my daughter chooses when she purchases StoryWorth. Pete can actually change the questions to be ones he wants to answer. Pete writes the answers and I record them on my iPhone and send them into Story Worth with photos that I have gathered of Pete’s life and stored on Google Photos.( this is an option) At the end of the year, her about to be 79-year-old Dad gets a book with all his stories.

It is a slam dunk for reminiscence. The adult child and or family receive the family history to be passed down, the older family members get to both tell her or his story and know that their family is interested in what they have to share from their past and in the end get a book about their lifeform it a fabulous gift.

Order it from Valentine’s Day tomorrow and you will have a year full of family history, an aging adult who knows you care about listening to them and an incredible gift of a reminiscence book for next Valentines’ Day and the rest of your life that you can pass down.

If you visit Reminiscence Tips

2. First, arrive with a real Valentine card and a small sensory gift like a little chocolate or some fresh red and white flowers. Just the card and the gift evoke memories

3. Use empathetic listening Make all the messages you give the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting- say, “I want to listen to you.” This in itself is a gift to an older person as few people really listen to them as they age.

4. Ask questions that prompt the story but don’t make judgments. If there are going to record the family tale, as on your I phone, do it in a way that doesn’t distract or stop the older person from talking.

5. You might ask the client or the family for some family photos of the older person growing up, getting married, and use those as memory prompts.

6. Start somewhere. If the elder isn’t going to tell stories on his or her own, start the story and see if they will follow along.” Did you go to Valentine’s parties when you were a kid or celebrate the day in school by exchanging valentines .” Did you have a special valentine as a teenager or young adult?”

7. If the client has dementia you can still do this with reminiscence prompts like a valentine, chocolate, some flowers or a simple valentine decoration you bring.

8. Use technology tools to help you with this legacy-building for your older client like Life Bio- or

Quick Voice Recorder to catch the memory on your phone.

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Feed me Feed Me-How Do You Get Conservators to Make Referrals to Your Business ?

February 10, 2020

Why would third parties like conservators or guardians use a care manager to assist with their aging client and family? If you have an Aging Life or GCM business you need to know.

Why do you need to know this? First, you need to create a practice that meets the needs of major referral sources like conservators the term we use in California or a guardian , Many clients- usually adult children, call you to start services on their own but a conservator calls you directly.

A conservator or guardian has the legal choice in hiring a geriatric care manager or ALCA members. These third parties need to know what you will do to help them with their clients if they are to work with your agency. On the feeding chain of referrals, conservators or guardians can be one of your most important sources to feed income into your business. You have to deliver what they need to make money.

Benefits and Features

Features often directly address common problems experienced by users. Benefits are the outcomes or results that users will (hopefully) experience by using your product or service – the very reason why a prospective customer becomes an actual customer.

For example, a conservator is usually a legal entity that manages money and legal guidelines. A geriatric care manager is usually a health professional who specializes in the physical and mental health of an older person. So you benefit a conservator or guardian by offering your in-depth knowledge of of the health care issues and solutions for an older conservatees

How Do you Sell Your Services to a Guardian or Conservator – Benefits

Some Examples of benefits you bring to a conservator guardian

You can act as a ‘medical information hub,’ attending doctor appointments and providing Conservator with physician notes, current vital signs, medications information, and treatment directions.
You can assess whether care in a facility is delivered as contracted by the Conservator.
You allow the Conservator to get out of the ‘hot seat’ when working with families with extreme dysfunction.

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