Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Caregiver Assessment- Can it Prevent Caregiver Burnout?

October 3, 2019

Caregiver Burnout is Big Federal Problem

Family caregivers are so many times in a complete state of caregiver burnout. From a policy perspective, the federal government and the long-term care system in the United State cannot afford to neglect the burnout and strain of millions of Americans caregivers any longer.

Despite the rewards caregivers get from giving care we know from years of research that being a family caregiver results in brutal losses. These degradations and deficits include role conflict and overload from the never-ending tasks demanded of a caregiver. Left in a permanent state of worry and anxiety much of the time, caregivers are working in a deteriorating and unpredictable situation.

Caregivers Feel Trappedchannel_caregiver_burnout.jpg

Caregivers can feel entrapped by there the restrictions on their own life. They are often beset by fiscal worries because they are not paid except in some states, like California under Medicaid. Yet the caregiving situation explodes in cost through medical bills, medical equipment and informal care that must be brought in, if the family can afford it.

Caregivers Are Not Attorneys

Family caregivers face a quagmire of legal problems including untangling wills, trusts, and inheritance issues which generally complicate care both emotionally and physically. Many times these family caregivers compound their fiscal woes by having to quit their job, running the risk of never being hired again, and that is if they can eventually return to work.

Caregivers Mental Health Ravaged

The caregivers own physical and mental health is often ravaged. They have to do medical tasks that years ago family caregivers never had to do. If they were paid by an agency, this would be a workman’s compensation nightmare for the company, yet these family caregivers are never even paid. So it is time that geriatric care managers and other professionals in aging started to respond to this family caregiver nightmare and use a caregiver assessment every time they assess an older client tended by a family caregiver.

Find out more in the YouTube below from My Geriatric Care 1 Channel.

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, aging family crisis, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, care manager, caregiver assessment, caregiver burnout, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, elder care manager, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Webinar Tagged With: aging parent care, aging parent crisis, assessing the caregiver, caregiver, caregiver assessment, caregiver burnout, caregiver overload, caregiver overwhelm, caregiver stress, caregiving family members, case manager, elder care crisis, Functional Assessment, geraitric assessment, Geriatric Assessment, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, informal caregiver, Marriage and Family Therapist, My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual, stress and burden

Caregiver Assessment- When The Caregiver Loses Sense of Self

September 22, 2019

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When you assess an older client with a family caregiver, you really have two clients. The needs of the family caregiver are different than the needs of the care receiver and the geriatric care manager or aging professional must differentiate those needs to make sure the care receiver’s functional and psychosocial needs are met. The care receiver and the family caregiver are one homeostatic system encompassing the whole aging family. To keep that family healthy and whole, in the middle of swirling care crisis, the care manager must first recognize that there are multiple clients including the person who gives or supervises care. In a health care insult, family members who give care are often referred to by the inanimate wooden term “ resources”. They have also been referred to as “ informants “.

 

Stripping Caregivers Personhood

This stripping of personhood denudes them of their status as individuals and melts them into the caregivers, thus breeds professional ignorance, like the crowd who watched the emperor with no clothes. We are blind to caregiver’s humanity and thus their own needs.

Seld-Esteem Vanishes With Caregiving

Many family caregivers lose their self-esteem because they fail at so many other parts of their lives when their whole life seems to be taken up by caregiving. They do not get vacations as the care-receiver does not take a break from illness and aging. Often there are few others to give them respite. Caregivers, often they just do not know where to find help or even ask for it. If family caregivers have children and husbands, they are often squeezed between their needs, the needs of the care receiver – thus have no room for their own needs. They are breathless and slogging forward.

Find out more in the YouTube from My Geriatric Care 1 Channel.

Filed Under: Aging, caregiver, caregiver assessment, Caregiver Burn Out, caregiver burnout, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, case manager, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging parent, aging parent care, assessing the caregiver, caregiver assessment, caregiver burden, caregiver burnout, caregiver overload, caregiver overwhelm, caregiver stress, geraitric care manager, Geriatric Assessment, Geriatric care management operations manual, geriatric care manager, informal caregiver, long distance care provider, National Assocaition of Geraitric Care Managers

Memorial Day- Look Into GRECC- Great Program of VA

May 27, 2013

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Here is a follow up to my blog yesterday from the front page of the Wall Street Journal today Memorial Day.

If you work with elders look into the GRECC program . I can’t say enough about the VA once you get there- (a mountain to climb). But at the top is heaven. My Dad and I got the best care in the world. He had a geriatrician who spent an hour with him each visit, all the supplies he needed, psychiatric services, kindness, gentleness, transportation almost door to door and respect for what he had suffered and who he was in the here and now.

I got a geriatric assessment. I teach it, think it, write it but no one ever had the kindness to offer it to me. I found in those few hours with the VA RN and Social Worker what an incomparable tool it really is. Their goal was to tell me my Dad was going to die and help me through it. I wasn’t a geriatric care manager then- I was just who I really am, a daughter, caregiver and human being in pain. They supported me, gave me tools, consoled me ,cradled me.

So I would like to honor the GRECC program on Memorial Day and say it is brilliant, human, kind, and a tool that the VA offers that is life changing to all who use it. It was all that to me and my father- Harry V. Cress pictured above.

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging parent, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, assessing the caregiver, care plan as saftey net, care plan interventions, caregiver, caregiver assessment, caregiver burnout, caregiver family meeting, case manager, elderly at end of life, Forgiveness, Geriatric Assessment, geriatric assessment for end of life, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, geriatric care managers, geriatrician, GRECC Program, informal caregiver, National Assocaition of Geraitric Care Managers, parent care, parent care crisis, POW World War II, PTSD in family caregivers, PTSD in Vets World War II, Suicides among military, Tools of Geraitric Care Managment, VA Care, VA disability delayed, Veterans Day

GCM Tools for the Aging Family

May 22, 2013

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Geriatric Care Managers (GCM’s) solve the problems of older people and aging families with tools of geriatric assessment and care plans. They unravel the changing needs of older clients and their family and private and family caregivers by regularly monitoring and assessing their needs.

GCMs have what I call a “ Whole Family” approach. With the “Whole Family” tool, the GCM serves the older client but also organizes the aging family and midlife siblings to work as a team to support the older person. Now that the family is no longer Ozzie and Harriet and  has morphed into the extended family ( Modern Family)- this is vital. Stepsibling adult children can cut off other siblings or step parents and fracture the potential  to field a family team This takes viewing the family system  with an assessment labeled a family genogram, which can measure who is relating to whom and who is cut off from whom.  GCM’s then help reorganize the aging family to support them to share the care for the older person.

This support to the family by the GCM is especially given to the designated family caregiver, as they provide direct care to the older client and may make decisions about care. GCM’s also may also oftem provide support  a long distance care provider .Giving direct hands on care  or long distance care can spiral into caregiver stress and burnout. A GCM will use a caregiver assessment tool to measure caregiver strain, which often spins an aging family into chaos.

 

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging family, aging parent, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, assessing the caregiver, Care Managers Working with the Aging Family, care monitoring, care plan, care plan interventions, care planning, caregiver burden, caregiver burnout, caregiver overwhelm, caregiver stress, caregiving family members, case manager, geraitric assessment, geraitric care manager, geriatric care management, informal caregiver, informal supports of an older person, LCSW, long distance care provider, long distance caregiver, Marriage and Family Therapist, My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers Conference, whole family approach in aging

Professionals Mediating Fighting and Feuding at the End of Life-

April 15, 2013

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May is National Geriatric Care Manager’s Month I will be speaking at the 29th annual Conference of the National Association of Professional Care Manager’s in Philadelphia on Friday April 19th. I will cover the thorny topic, The GCM as the Accidental Mediator: Fretting and Fighting or Feuding: Intergenerational Conflict in the Adult Family at End of Life. If you are interested in attending and learning more you can still register and attend the conference. . If you are considering this growing profession, I wrote the textbook Handbook of Geriatric Care Management,that is now out in it’s 3rd edition. If you think of opening a GCM agency, I just published the first manual on how to operate a geriatric care management agency My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual. 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging family, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, case manager, Dana Curtis, disputes at end of life, dysfuntional family, elderly at end of life, end of life, facilitator, family caregivers, Fighting and Feuding at end of life, geraitric assessment, geraitric care manager, Handbook of Geriatric Care Management third edition, home modification, Hospice, informal caregiver, Marriage and Family Therapist, mediation, mediator, mediiator, MFT, My Geraitric Care Management Operations Manual, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers Conference, red flags for a family meeting, sibling family meeting, sibling rivalry, sibling team, sibling teamwork, siblings feuding

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