Hope is the Best Tool on the Holidays !
How do you give the family Holiday Hope? 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 in 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 Give the Family Holiday Hope? 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 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
To give the family holiday hope the use of Self is perhaps the most powerful tool for geriatric care managers. The use of Self provides families with guarded optimism. GCMs 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,
confidentiality, consistency, and support.
Finally, give the family holiday hope by 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 HOLIDAY WEBINAR –
Get Ready for the Holiday Rush
WEDNESDAY, November 16th, 2022, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST
Learn how to create!
- Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers
- Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
- Pre-Holiday Marketing to help you sign up families who might face a serious decline in aging parents
- How to sell services to desperate post-holiday callers from Normal dysfunctional & long-distance family
- How to use tools to contain holiday chaos & arrange care in festive family fright
- How to move the family to New Year’s stability
-
Give the Family Holiday Hope
- Position Your Agency ahead of Care Managers who do not have great pre-holiday marketing campaigns and lack the clinical skills how to work with Adult Children and families during the chaotic aging family holiday visit when adult kids find their aging parents need care
- Featuring
Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care
Management
SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL GERIATRIC CARE 1
One sibling has taken over Mom or Dad’s care and her/his dysfunctional midlife adult siblings just don’t want her to do this. It only takes a few drinks at dinner and snarky remarks start a fracas that leads to cut-off, which leads to them not sharing in Mom’s care, overloading the sibling caregiver, and endangering Mom’s care, through this shunning.
For those adult children who are time-deprived, and can’t see Mom over the holidays, order
aging. Adult children can also ruin the holiday celebration one way or another. Maybe they are drugging themselves with the telly or abusing prescription drugs. 
