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
Successfully Market Your GCM COVID 19 Service
If you are a geriatric care manager or Aging Professional learn to market and sign up new clients for your Aging COVID-19 coaching services for, both long distance and local- adult
children, based on science step and sound public health policies, using telehealth. Help family care providers faced with a pandemic, support an aging loved one through a COVID Hospitalization, and recovering at home.
Be able to sell care management COVID services that fill the gap created by the federal government, state, county, cities and CDC ‘s mixed messaging
created, leaving family caregivers confused frustrated, with no clear path to safety from the raging pandemic,
Gain new customers and help aging families stay safe from COVID using care management’s most potent tool – navigation- through the potholed path they have right
now.
You will learn
- How to create an e-newsletter with the right copy, to get out the word about your COVID 19 services
- How to use social media to alert aging family caregivers to the clear path your GCM agency provides to safety from the accelerating virus in the US
- Be able to set up a Zoom webinar to teach local aging agencies and caregivers about your COVID coaching services and other local resources to assist caregivers in the community
- Get local media coverage of your COVID -19 Coaching Services with radio and TV coverage plus pick local newspapers where adds may pay off to sell
your COVID Products
- How to generate word of mouth customers for your COVID -19 service using your continuum of care in your community
Sign Up
The first thing that the geriatric care manager works on is to find out if the older person has the required legal documents –
If documents are completed, locate in the home and provide explanations to the family that they must give a copy to emergency contacts and physicians as required and place in planning binder. In the planning “Go binder” list all emergency contacts with phone numbers/e-mail addresses – family, friends, physicians, pharmacy, professionals providing in-home services. Also, list all medications and prescribing physicians in
