Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Does The Dysfunctional Aging Family Need Mediation Post The Holidays ?

January 4, 2021

If your clients  ‘holiday visit from their family was miserable and you are care manager to the aging parents, a family meeting between the adult sisters and brothers and a mediatory might be needed this January. This will help you decide if you need a mediator or you can be a facilitator at the family meeting. Care Managers can do facilitation but you need very advanced training to be a mediator.

a. Compatible. Does their family generally present as a unit and lock arms together in a crisis? Do you usually work as a team?

b. Fragmented: Is their family unable to work together as a unit? Do their family members and siblings contact friends and outside professionals with their problems, while failing to confide in each other? Do family members ask other family and other

siblings, friends, and outside professionals to keep conversations secret from certain relatives? Is there a cache of family secrets that some family members do not tell others or share? Do kin pit one another against each other when trouble arises? Instead of locking arms in a crisis, does their family point fingers and blame each other?

c. Is their family productive or non-productive?

        1.Productive: Are the family members able to respond to the suggestions of friends or professionals and take necessary action to create change in the family?

         2.Nonproductive: Are any family members unable to mobilize when help is really needed? Do any siblings or other kin feel powerless to act? Is “victim” a term you would use for some family members and or siblings? Do family members ignore the ideas friends or professionals who are trying to transform the sibling/ family dynamics

d. Is their family stable or fragile?

         1.. Stable – When family members have disagreements, do they find a way to solve their problems? Does the family have long-standing relationships and respect the differences in each other?

         2. Fragile: Is there a history of emotional cut-offs or distancing on the part of one or more family members? Is there a pattern of generational divorce, remarriage?

Each family is different but if this family scores 2 out of three you should investigate bringing in a mediator ed6855aa32d877d7fc1ef9ee757e0f17-98.jpg

Sign Up for My Free January Webinar  

5 Vital Clinical Tools to Help Aging Dysfunctional Families-Post Horrid Holidays- 

             Thursday, January 21, 2021

              2:00-3:30 Pacific Standard Time

  Give frantic adult children hope when they desperately call after the holiday  

 Join me and learn how to come to the rescue of concierge dysfunctional families who found coal in their stocking.      

Learn how to!

  • Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders
  • Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family
  • Master Vital Clinical Tools, you to solve client problems
  • Take Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
  • Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist

 SIGN UP NOW

Read Dana Curtis Esquire’s Mediation and Geriatric Care Management in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th Edition 

Filed Under: aging family crisis, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Blog, case manager, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, elder mediator, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, mediation, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging dysfunctional family, aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, dysfunctional family holidays, dysfunctional family roles, elder mediation, elder mediator, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, mediation, mediator, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Psychosocial assessment

Best Tool for Dysfunctional Family on Holidays- Hope

December 22, 2020

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Hope is the Best Tool on the Holidays

During Christmas and Hannaka family caregivers, especially in the dysfunctional family can be drinking or numbing themselves from the pain of caregiving. They will ruin the holiday celebration one way or another. Maybe they are drugging themselves with the telly or abusing prescription drugs. Depression and anxiety ( rife among caregivers) are predictors of increased alcohol use. Social isolation, which is experienced by some caregivers, is also predictive of increased alcohol use.

 

How do you as a geriatric care manager change the script for these aging dysfunctional families – family caregivers and older members who are supposed to care for but can’t. How does a professional GCM make the characters transform? 

 

It’s actually simple –but loaded with skill- give them hope. You need to and use yourself to give them hope that things will change. It’s the best tool in a geriatric care manager toolbox- especially on and after the dreaded holidays.

 Use of Self

The use of Self is perhaps the most powerful tool for geriatric care managers. The use of Self provides families with guarded optimism. GCM’s have to offer a vision of the future that is based not only on a desire for hopeful outcomes. This has come from our own clinical knowledge and belief that change to their nasty crippled, family

system is indeed possible.

By being direct, empathetic, and

nonjudgmental, we become a holding bay for

stressed caregivers, creating a place of safety, c

onfidentiality, consistency, and support.

Finally, GCM’s offer our clients a model of

perseverance. By giving up on the possibility of

positive change and by exploring all options,

the GCM enables families to feel that, regardless of the outcome, they have done all that they can to support the older adult.

Be like Judy Garland  on the holiday offering hope


Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
Let your heart be light


From now on
our troubles will be out of sight

Give the” Merry Christmas – next year

 

Sign Up for My Free January Webinar  

5 Vital Clinical Tools to Help Aging Dysfunctional Families-Post Horrid Holidays- 

             Thursday, January 21, 2021

  Give frantic adult children hope when they desperately call after the holiday  

 Join me and learn how to come to the rescue of concierge dysfunctional families who found coal in their stocking.      

Learn how to!

  • Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders
  • Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family
  • Master Vital Clinical Tools, you need to solve client problems
  • Take Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
  • Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist

 SIGN UP NOW

 

SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL GERIATRIC CARE 1

Filed Under: Aging Alcohol Abuse, caregiver, Caregiver Burn Out, caregiver burnout, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Loneliness, Long distance caregiver, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, alcohol on the holidays, Alcolhol abuse in the elderly, care manager, case manager, dysfunctional family, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays with aging parents, My Dysfunctional Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Use of Self

Make a Plan to Help Aging Parents Cannot Celebrate Holidays Together

December 16, 2020

HOLIDAY GATHERING WITH AGING PARENTS NOT SAFE

Dr. Michael Osterholm, Disease Expert U of Minnesota has warned against  gathering in person with elder family members on the Holidays
“We need somebody to start to articulate, ‘What is our long-term plan? How are we going to get there? Why are we asking people to sacrifice distancing? Why are we telling

people if you really love your family, you won’t go home for Christmas and end up infecting mom or dad or grandpa and grandma.’ We don’t have that storytelling going on right now, and that’s every bit as important as the science itself,”

 

NEED LONG TERM PLAN STARTING NOW

So adult children need to start making a long-term plan. What are they going to say to their aging parents to convey they do not want to infect or even expose them to covid-19 so you cannot celebrate the holidays together? They cannot come to your home for the festivities and grandma and grandpa cannot go to theirs.

This takes, as Osterholm suggested

creating a story and learning how to tell stories if you do not already know.

HOW TO TELL A STORY 

Vaile Wright, senior director for health care innovation at the American Psychological Association. suggests starting the story by explaining how much you care about your family“I feel it’s in my family’s best interests to be more strict, so we’re not going to travel for Christmas.” This type of language, she said, makes the other person less defensive, since it doesn’t come across as “You aren’t doing the right thing so I can’t come to visit.”

SIGN UP FOR MY WEBINAR

 

Sign Up for My January Webinar  

 Working with Aging Dysfunctional Families- January and February-Long Day’s Journey into Night- 

             Thursday, January 21, 2021

 

Give frantic adult children hope when they desperately call after the holiday

 

Join me and learn how to come to the rescue of concierge dysfunctional  families who found coal in their st

 

 

 Learn how to:family-charis1-226x300.jpg

Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders

 

Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family 

 

Master the 5 Clinical Tools – you need – to solve these problems with your clients

 

Learn Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families

 

 

 

 

 

 

Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel  Geriatric Care 1

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, Coronavirus safety elders, CORONAVIRUS Stay at Home Plan, COVID & HOLIDAY SEASON, Covid Holiday Remote Visit, COVID Webinar, COVID-19 Webinar, Families, FREE WEBINAR, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, HolidaySeason and COVID, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, TELEHEALTH HOLIDAY PLAN, Telehealth with GCM, ZOOM CHRISTMAS, ZOOM HANUKKAH, ZOOM THANKSGVING Tagged With: aging family, aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, COVID & Christmas, COVID & Holidays, COVID & Seasonal Flu, COVID VIRTUAL CHRISTMAS VISIT, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday COVID Celebration, HOLIDAY VISIT TO FAMILY PLAN, nurse advocate, nurse care manager

Can’t See Aging Mom Holidays COVID -Make Her Feel U Are There 5 Ways

December 8, 2020

Absent Long Distance Care Provider Holidays Answers

If you are a long-distance care provider, or a care manager that works with one, what’s the best way to keep in touch with the long-distance elder if you can’t visit on coming  Christmas or Hanukkah especially now that COVID is rampant and very contagious throughout the country

Easy Low-Touch Non-Tech Ideas

Use low touch—the old-fashioned communication elders grew up – the Post Office and telephone. If you can’t see Mom or Christmas or Hanukkah, send a card. Older people came from a generation

where cards and mail were really meaningful. It is easy and really touches elders who love opening the little personal mail they get, especially from family. These heritage links are a great way to support a far away elder. Non-tech, they cause no stress on their part. Even we boomers who walk haltingly through the tech world of 40 characters forget that connecting with a stamp or a call is so familiar to an older person. Plus you give that feeling of warmth they always got when they  “ opened” “ or “ answered” something real (not virtual); Try having the whole family sending a card even kids. A flooded mailbox on Christmas or Hanukkah fills their hearts.

If and you can’t see Mom on Christmas or Hanukkah safely due to COVID s, mail holiday care packages —bake or buy cookies . Bake it with your children and send samples along with actual photos of everyone baking in the kitchen or buying treats.  Even if they crumble a bit, elders will smell the affection.

Easy Option -Holiday in a Box 

If you can’t see Mom on Hanukkah or Christmas, send a “ holiday in a box for Christmas and Hanukkah coming up. Send a basket of kids drawings, candy, nuts, home-baked or purchased holiday bread that reflects the holiday celebration plus a gift certificate for a Christmas dinner or dinner with a friend.  Give Mom joy in a simple package. For an extra special surprise, arrange an invitation to a Hanukkah  dinner with a friend or through your parents’ synagogue or church

A Little Help From Aging Parents Becca-Bulter-Scott-taci-Kirsten-.jpgFriends

Skip that holiday in a box, if you can’t see Mom on Hanukkah or Christmas you can create a circle of care. Get the app  Lots of Helping Hands through neighbors, friends, people in your elder’s place of worship, or a group they belong to. Then you can ask if they can arrange to include your older relative or friend in a Christmas dinner or Midnight Mass or Hanukkah meal, with Latkes or Shabbat service. You will then have an entire support team your elder with a whole circle of support in the future and not feel so alone.

 

REMINISCENCE- a win-win on Holidays-as people age they love this and you get their memories

  • Give your parent Storyworth. Print the prompts and drop off to your loved one then pick up and enter using the dictation on your phone then send it into Storyworth. At the end of the year, they get a printed book of reminiscence.

  • Join ancestry yourself and bring your computer to your older loved one’s home and show them your family tree as you build it. They can give you family history and memories as you create the family tree that you would miss when they are gone.

  • Get out your old family albums, with older pictures of your parents with your kids, and have them identify people in photos by emailing some of the photos to your older family members. Then upload the photos later to Google photos so you have both names of relatives, stories of pictures, and photos digitally saved.

Make Aging Tech for Holiday Gift

Send a high tech gift, if you can’t see Mom or Dad over Christmas or Hanukkah. Send a high tech device that your loved one can really use and figure out. I just ordered the Esky Wireless Locator because I keep misplacing my glasses.

How Care Managers Help Get for Long Distance Care Providers

Care Manager can do lots of things for a family member who is long distance and can’t see Mom on Christmas or Hanukkah. Geriatric Care Manager Julie Menack in her chapter “Long Distance Care Providers” in my book Care Managers Working With the Aging Family lists tasks long-distance care providers can do to make their own lives and their long-distance loved ones saner, sounder, and happier

Find a Care Manager Through Aging Life

If you want to investigate an Aging Life geriatric care manager in your parent’s own town find a professional who can help you do all this so you can remain a son or daughter and less stressed caregiver.

 

Filed Under: Adult children, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Blog, branding, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Grandchild gifts for grandma, Hanukkah, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long Distance Care, Long distance caregiver, marketing to long distance adult children, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Quality of Life Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging life or geriatric care manager, case manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Hanukkah Rituals, Holiday in a Box, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays rituals, holidays with aging parents, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Reminiscence on the Holidays

Can Blue Blue Christmas and Hanukkah Come From Dementia ?

December 2, 2020

As Elvis Predicted

Many families have a Blue Blue Christmas-or Hanukkah. Why does an aging crisis occur so often during the holidays? How can so many desperate adult children get care managers on the phone and howl about Mom or Dad in December? There are a million bad reasons, – too much alcohol, too many folks who do not get along and drink that alcohol.  But the physical basis for all of this misery in an elder is often a loss of executive function and IADL’s and ADL’s

Why ADL’s and IADL’s.

It takes  IADLs- (Instrumental Activities of Daily Living) shopping for gifts, cooking ritual meals and ADL’s walking to shopping

, decorate serve a ritual meal, climbing ( getting all those decorations out of the attic), grooming ( Mom can be found – in a “messy ensemble” at the feast) by the older person in charge of the holiday to pull it off.  Then add depression to the aging stew – widowhood, loneliness and you have the challenges to an elder, usually the woman in the family,  in managing this entire titanic ritual.

Crash of Executive Skills

The holidays in aging families can be a disaster for another neurological reason. Mom or Dad’s Executive Skills have crashed just like a computer.

Executive functioning involves the ability to organize, plan, and carry out a set of tasks in an efficient manner. It also includes the ability to self-monitor and control our behaviors and multiple other cognitive functions and to perform the goal-directed behavior. It can be described as high-level thinking skills that control and direct lower levels of cognitive functioning.

Planning for the holidays takes those high-level thinking skills -to execute and carry out 25 different major tasks according to a study in the UK- Just think, planning a 

specific holiday ritual menu,( brisket and latkes or popovers and beef prime rib )- then shopping for it cooking it, planning the ritual items in the celebration – a menorah and

Hanukkah bush, Christmas tree, and creche buying them or getting them out of storage on and on.

Why we may end up with burned brisket or turkey.

This is a massive task event/ planning job taken on by one woman usually and as executive functioning power down in her brain- the computer-, which is our aging brain starts to crash- the result- the family freaks out because Mom forgot the ritual steps.

That’s why we need aging life or geriatric care managers to help divide the tasks when Mom cannot do this any longer

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel to learn More- Geriatric Care 1 

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR

FINAL DAY TO SIGN UP!

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

 

 Learn how!

  • 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

THIS FREE WEBINAR IS Thursday, December 3, 2020, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

Sign Up Now

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: ADL Loss & Holidays, Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Alzheimers, Alzheimers & Holidays, Blog, care manager, case manager, Concierge Senior, Dementia, Dementia & Holidays, Dysfunctional aging family, Families, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long Distance Care, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, Alzheimers, alzheimers & holidays, care manager, case manager, case manager geriatric social worker, COVID & Christmas, COVID & Holiday Season, COVID Virtual Hanukkah Visit, Dementia & Holiday Tasks, early Alzheimers, Executive Skills, Functional Assessment, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, holidays with aging parents, IADLs, nurse advocate, nurse care manager

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