long distance caregiver Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

Can’t See Aging Mom Easter, Passover-7 Ways to Make Her Feel U Are There

April 12, 2022

Can’t see Aging Mom on Easter or Passover

Can’t See Your Mom on Easter or Passover – Long Distance?

Can’t See your Mom on Passover or Easter as you are a long-distance care provider, what’s the best way to keep in touch with the long-distance elder if you can’t visit on coming Passover or Easter.

Easy Low-Touch Non-Tech Ideas

photo of father and boy coloring Easter egg together as Can’t see Aging Mom on Easter or Passover

Use low touch—the old-fashioned communication elders grew up – the Post Office and telephone. If you can’t see Mom or Easter or Passover, send a card with a photo of your kids dying easter eggs. 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” saw a real photo -something real (not virtual); Try having the whole family send a card even kids. A flooded mailbox on Easter or Passover fills their heart.

Let Mom or Dad Smell The Affection. Send Passover Easter in a box

Can’t see Mom or Dad on Passover or Easter but Dad or Mom, are not religious, mail holiday care packages —bake or buy cookies or small loaves of bread. 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

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

Passover in a Box

For those adult children who are time-deprived, and can’t see Mom over the holidays, order Passover in a box on Amazon if you have little time and want to send something special. The same goes with Easter in a box with delicious Easter cookies.

A Little Help From Aging Parents Friends

Skip that holiday in a box, if you can’t see Mom on Passover or Easter 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 the Easter brunch, egg hunt or Passover meal. You will then have an entire support team your elder with a whole circle of support in the future and not feel so alone.

Make Aging Tech for Holiday Gift

Send a high-tech gift, if you can’t see Mom or Dad over Easter or Passover. 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 to Long Distance CarProviders

Care Managers can do lots of things for a family member who is long-distance and can’t see Mom on Easter or Passover. 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 a less stressed caregiver.

Do You Know The Best Phrases To Attract VIP Care Management Clients?

What Do Long Distance Care Families Need for Parent’s Sheltering in Place 4 COVID ?

August 15, 2020

Long-Distance Care Providers need a safety net for themselves.

Adult Children who live at a distance from older family members need someone to cover the tasks to help their loved ones when needed. During COVID -19 when all elders should shelter in place because they are the most vulnerable to the novel, deadly virus long-distance care providers really need help.

COVID -19 means it is best for people over 65 to have little contact with others. But not all the supplies can be ordered online. In fact with the Post office delivery slowing down, everyone who lives long distance, may wait a long time for delivery of needed items for COVID safety, especially if they live in a rural area,. These family caregivers may need someone to actually shop and pick meds at the last minute when needed food or meds do not arrive by mail. Having another person to accompany the elder on walks with a mask and safe distancing or a drive breaks up the tedium that can arise from the loneliness and isolation of sheltering in place.

Safety Net for Double Disasters

If there is an emergency on top of the pandemic- Long-distance care providers need someone to respond as they live far away. During this summer with double disasters like wildfires now in Colorado, hurricanes blowing up the east coast they need an emergency plan on top of the COVID threat. A surrogate must be ready to help the older loved one right away and get them out of harm’s way fast and check if it is even safe to go to a shelter. What they need is an emergency safety net.

Call a Care Manager

If family at a distance does not have a friend or neighbor who can do this, they should consider the perfect emergency and daily safety net in a geriatric care manager. The Aging Life Care Association has an online search tool to find a professional by ZIP code. It also includes a list of questions to ask when you look to hire someone.

GCM can Provide & Supervise Caregivers’s For Covid Related Tasks

If the family caregivers chooses, the care manager will arrange for well screened aide, practicing covid saftey, to do all the shopping, take the elder out in the neighborhood for a walk or a car ride, prepare

meals, engage in social connections, and do all the cleaning and disinfecting need daily with the coronavirus threat . The GCM will visit aging parents on a regular basis to check on the health status of the elder in general and in relationship to Covid-19 exposure plus confer with their care providers along with texts calling and email them for supervision. Most of all they will regularly confer with with the family caregiver to get keep them up to date.

Find Help Now

The Long Distance care provider can have care providers from the care management agency care do all of these tasks, depending upon other back-up and care level of your older loved one. A care manager themselves, will directly monitor your loved one’s health, respond in emergencies like hospital admission, accompany them to a doctor and manage the care management care providers when you are not there and directly report to you. To find care managers go to the Aging Life Care Association

Long Distance Care Provider-Go to Elder’s Next Dr’s Visit

March 5, 2014

If you are a long distance care provider – be a patient advocate- take your relative to his or her physician and go in the examining room with them.

Before your trip to your elderly relative:

ØCall to make an appointment with your elderly relative’s physician on a date during your visit.

ØIn the call

ØAsk to talk to his her RN, and get a good understanding of the doctor’s practice, so you can ask the best questions. Is she an internist, general practionioner, or geriatrician?

ØIf you have concerns, like increased confusion, a fall that you think important to discuss, tell the RN and send them to the office, via fax or e-mail, prior to the appointment. Ask if she/he can show to the doctor.

ØGive yourself your important job title–. You are a main caregiver and have a vital interest in this visit. If you are the power of attorney for health care make sure the RN knows that. Ask about a HIPAA Release of Information Form, and make sure one is on file at the doctor’s office so that you can talk about private information about the older person with the doctor.

Before the doctor’s visit

ØTalk to the older person and ask what they’d like to discuss to with the doctor.

ØMake list of all the questions you or your elderly relative wants to ask and symptoms that worry you both. Physicians like short precise information. Remember that physician’s appointments are brief – like 10 minutes make the questions concise and short. Take these with you and either can I pad, I phone or pen and paper.

During the doctors visit

Be a patient advocate. Go in to the examining room to see the doctor with your elderly relative. Be friendly and communicate and with a smile. This simple sign can get you a long way. Cover your questions and concerns quickly and concisely. Listen to her/his answers and order and jot them down. If the doctor does not it bring up, ask if there are any medication changes and record these as well. Note any additional tests the doctor orders to be sure your parent follows up.

After the doctor’s visit

ØGo to the pharmacy and pick up any new medication

Ask the pharmacist They know more than the physician about drugs about all new and old meds: purpose, directions, dose, potential problems. You can do this at any large pharmacy. Just ask to talk to a pharmacist.

ØIf you have hired a geriatric care manager they will do this for you and report back the results after the visit.

GCM Tools for the Aging Family

May 22, 2013

PDF-Cover-of-11-10-12My-Geriatric-Care-Management-Agency.jpg

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.

New York Times -Robots in Future of Aging ?

May 20, 2013

PDF-Cover-of-11-10-12My-Geriatric-Care-Management-Agency.jpg

Robot and Frank was one my favorite 2012 aging films. Frank, a master burglar is presented a robot by his overwrought, burnt out adult son. Frank has early dementia. He hates the robot but trains him to increase his quality of life, which is returning to his career- grand theft. This New York Times article has a different story about robots – but a similar vein. They meet a need. There are less adult children and caregivers to care for the elderly and more and more older adults – and thus – the niche market for robots .

Long Distance Care Provider-Go to Elder’s Next Dr’s Visit

GCM Tools for the Aging Family

New York Times -Robots in Future of Aging ?

Contact

Connect with Cathy

Get Cathy’s “10 Critical Success Steps to a Profitable Aging Life or GCM Business”

Can’t See Your Mom on Easter or Passover – Long Distance?

Easy Low-Touch Non-Tech Ideas

Let Mom or Dad Smell The Affection. Send Passover Easter in a box

Easy Option -Holiday in a Box

Passover in a Box

A Little Help From Aging Parents Friends

Make Aging Tech for Holiday Gift

How Care Managers Help Get to Long Distance CarProviders

Find a Care Manager Through Aging Life

Long-Distance Care Providers need a safety net for themselves.

Safety Net for Double Disasters

Call a Care Manager

GCM can Provide & Supervise Caregivers’s For Covid Related Tasks

Find Help Now

Successfully Market Your GCM COVID 19 Service

You will learn

Sign Up

Contact

Connect with Cathy

Get Cathy’s “10 Critical Success Steps to a Profitable Aging Life or GCM Business”