Are You Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees?

December 12, 2022

Are You Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees?

Giving holiday thanks to your employees for their work during the holidays is key to being a good employer. Christmas and Hannakka are coming up when we offer thanks to our friends, loved ones, and family. But what about thanking your employees this holiday month? How will you thank your employees, the very people that power your business and profit and may be on call for you right now on New Year?

A holiday party after hours catered or just ordering pizza plus buying bottles of wine, and nonalcoholic beverages then having a white elephant exchange hat can be fun and affordable

But if that is not in your plan here are Ideas for inexpensive but really appreciated gifts to thank your employees – this holiday season. Consider gift cards to grocery stores or department stores, or a gift certificate from Amazon all given with a nice personal handwritten note.

How To Thank Staff All Year

1. Thank your staff all year long for having the amount of productivity to keep the business thriving. Handwriting is not a lost art. It sends a message that you take the time, personally, to really celebrate what the employees do for your business.

2. Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees could be sending a handwritten thank-you note to thank your employees, to each staff member during the year applauding something they did. Be grateful by thanking your staff for something specific may be the ultimate reward. If you do it selectively yet authentically, a thank you note may be pinned above your employee’s desk for years. Create a formal letter recognizing your employee’s achievement. Sign it and use the company’s seal to give the letter something extra. If you really want to do it right, frame it.

3. Thank your staff by naming an employee of the month, each month in your newsletter with their picture. Give them a gift to tell them you are grateful for their hard work. Create a formal letter recognizing your employee’s achievement. Sign it and use the company’s seal to give the letter something extra. To thank your employees right, frame it too.

4. Giving holidays thanks to your employees, if you do feel safe, could be hosting an in-person party,If you do not feel it is covid safe, try a virtual employee holiday party and mail gifts ahead of time to all employees for being such excellent care managers all year. If it is late now so try New Year.

5. When the COVID level in your area is safe enough to gather, thank your employees, plan employee picnics, birthday parties, and anniversary parties to thank them publicly throughout the year.

6. B.J Curry- Spitler, one of the first and I might say the greatest care managers, founded Age Concerns in San Diego in 1982. and knew how to be grateful to her staff. She was a master at thanking her staff. To thank her employees, she gave gifts of massages to her care managers. A brilliant gift, a massage recognizes the tough emotional work that care managers do and their need to take care of themselves- which you as their employer are doing

This winter 90% of those who die of Covid will be over 65 . January is the deadliest month in the U.S. according to an analysis of the CDC Wonder database.

Understand End of Life this winter

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Jan 24, 2023, 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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Deliver a Good End of Life- 9 Steps to Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

Serve Your Client until Death Do You Part
Join me on January 24 2023 and learn why End of Life Services re a perfect new service for care managers

Learn to guide the patient/family through the five stages of death. Understand how to help clients be active participants in their care. Give the family caregivers tools to manage care. Find out how to provide family-centered care to caregivers and families. Learn to choose the right support services for the client through all stages of death.
Introduce Hospice and Palliative care to the client earlier and work with their team.
Find out how to use COVID -19 family coaching for GCM. Discover the role of Death Doula at end of life.

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Jan 24, 2023, 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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What Does a Care Manager Do Before End of Life Diagnosis?

November 29, 2022

End of Life has 5 Phases

Before the end-of-life diagnosis, the ALCA or GCM care manager helps clients be active participants in their care and gives the family caregiver the tools to manage the care.

The geriatric care manager serves older adults before they find they are dying. GCMs work with chronic care clients, sometimes for years, who eventually succumb to their illness. But they also work with clients who come to them facing the end of life issues.

The process of acceptance and adjustment to terminal illness has five phases:

before the diagnosis,

the acute phase

the chronic phase

the recovery phase

the terminal phase
Geriatric Care Managers’ Tasks Before the diagnosis
Schedule medical appts
Help family ask questions of medical professionals
Before visiting the client maintain an updated medication list and a list of any drug allergies
Assist the family in organizing all Advanced care planning documents documents
Go to medical appointments with the client or train family members make a list of questions and have ready
Set up personal health records.
Assist family members in setting up and use of a calendar to keep a log of important medication information, questions, and things out of the ordinary that happens to the ill person
Join me Tuesday, January 24, and learn why End of Life Services Are a perfect new service for care managers
Deliver a Good End of Life- Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency
Serve Your Client Until Death Do You Part

In this 1 ½ -hour webinar you will learn how to

1. Transition the patient/family through the five stages of death
2. Help clients be active participants in their care

3. Give the family/caregiver tools to manage care

4. Provide family center care to caregivers and family

5. Choose the right support services through all stages of death

6. Introduce Hospice and Palliative care and work with their team

7. Use ALCA End-of-Life Benefits During COVID

8.Use COVID -19 Family Coaching for GCM
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Free Webinar

If you really want to add End of Life to your care management business sign up for this webinar now

How Storytelling at Thanksgiving Can Give Elders A Happier Family Holiday

November 22, 2022

Want to increase aging parents’ and everyone’s enjoyment at Thanksgiving? Try storytelling at Thanksgiving using elders’ memories.

As an aging professional, you can bring joy to an older person through reminiscence, storytelling, and oral history for elders

This Thanksgiving, if you really do travel to a family home or grandma’s house, travel safely If not make the safest choice, stay home and use Zoom and include your elderly

parent. You can do oral history for elders if they can use a computer or have a family member or friend who visits often and who lives nearby and is in their bubble serve and share Thanksgiving dinner at their home and use zoom with them to see other family members on the holiday.

Share Your Thanksgiving Story

If you are at a family member’s holiday dinner and use reminiscence for elders by asking everyone to tell their favorite story about a Thanksgiving dinner. Start with midlife members to get the idea and then ask

again parents to share their stories.

Oral history for elders will bring extra thanks to Thanksgiving by learning about an elder’s past and giving them the opportunity to share, which sometimes they do not do in the hubbub of family talking.

The “telling ” also means someone documents. That magically gives the elder and a child social interaction and connectedness. Elders vividly recall their past by telling stories from vignettes in their life – especially life in their 20’s, which sparks the richest recall called the “20’s bump”, according to researchers.

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

So try storytelling at Thanksgiving and it becomes intergenerational. The older person is given a chance to give the larger picture of their life and family history to children and grandchildren or extended family, who may not have heard all the details of their grandparent’s or parent’s life before. My 10 grandchildren have grown up with their now 80-year-old grandfather. telling them exciting stories of when he was a California Highway patrolman. So a dual dose of a higher quality of life for both the older person and the aging family is increased through oral history and reminiscence.

Capture Your Families Past Before It Is Gone

Many midlife adults now do ancestry and regret that they did not ask questions of older family members when they were alive. Capture that past now on this family holiday. An aging professional or a geriatric care manager can suggest family or friends record the Thanksgiving story as oral history using technology like an i Phone or i Pad.

Story Telling at Thanksgiving with Story Worth

Another great idea to capture reminiscence for elders is giving them StoryWorth.

My daughter sent this gift to her Dad and both he and I love it. Each week StoryWorth sends a question to my husband that prompts him to write about his past. He writes his reminiscence out longhand and I easily use the dictation on my phone and email his story to Story Worth.

At the end of the year, my daughter will order a bound book of all the stories- a whole collection of memories, an oral history of an elder father that she might never think to ask and will be saved for her and her children to pass on family history. I will order a copy for all her three siblings. Equally important, my husband, really enjoyed writing about his past and the prompts have brought many vivid memories back to him.

Sweet grandmother holding a beautifully cooked turkey dinner.

Deliver a Good End of Life-Sign Up for my Free Webinar

November 20, 2022

Deliver a Good End of Life- Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

FIND OUT MORE

Serve Your Client Until Death Do You Part

Join me ,on January 24, 2023, and learn why End of Life Services Are a perfect service for care managers

In this 1 ½ -hour webinar you will learn how to:

1. Transition the patient/family through the five stages of death

2. Help clients be active participants in their care

3. Give the family/caregiver tools to manage care

4. Provide family-centered care to family or fictive family caregivers

5 Choose the right support services through all stages of death

6. Introduce Hospice and Palliative care and work with their team

7 Use ALCA End-of-Life Benefits During COVID

8.Use COVID -19 Family Coaching for GCM

9. Role of the Death Doula

Sign Up

If you really want to add End of Life to your care management business sign up for this webinar now

A Good End Of Life to the Very End

Atul Gawande’s acclaimed book, “Being Mortal“ opened our eyes to the medical way of death. He showed millions of readers how the quality of life and human interaction while dying trump the number of years gained through questionable painful procedures and dying in an institution.

He tells us that “our ultimate, goal, after, is not a good death but a good life to the very end. Learn how to deliver the good death through the 5 stages of the end of life. Get your client to hospice and palliative care when they need it not in the last 15 days of their life. Offer a Quality of life to death at home, not in the hospital where there will be the medicalization of death, not a good death.

Sign up for this free webinar to learn how you can do this as an aging professional who wants to whole of aging and the end of aging to offer GOOD CARE

Best Tool to Give the Family Holiday Hope

November 14, 2022

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

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Are You Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees?

Are You Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees?

How To Thank Staff All Year

This winter 90% of those who die of Covid will be over 65 . January is the deadliest month in the U.S. according to an analysis of the CDC Wonder database.

Understand End of Life this winter

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Are You Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees?

How To Thank Staff All Year

This winter 90% of those who die of Covid will be over 65 . January is the deadliest month in the U.S. according to an analysis of the CDC Wonder database.

Understand End of Life this winter

End of Life has 5 Phases

Geriatric Care Managers’ Tasks Before the diagnosis