parent care crisis Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

How an Art Museum is Combating Senior Loneliness in California?

March 22, 2019

Santa Cruz County, California is combating senior loneliness and isolation, through community organization and art. Following a similar exhibition on foster children MAH (Museum of Art and History), launched the Loneliness exhibition this year. MAH’s former director Nina Simon, who is internationally known, conceived the idea of community organization through museums ( Museum of Art and History) at MAH and is moving that brilliant concept globally.

Over the course of seven months, a group of Santa Cruz seniors, advocates, and artists , cascaded their ideas, art, hopes, and stories on senior loneliness and isolation in the Santa Cruz community together to create this inspiring exhibition. They created personal artwork about loneliness, brainstormed solutions to build connection and offered their words of wisdom for future generations.

Alongside incredible artworks, on loneliness by local seniors, this exhibit created 45 action cards to offer solutions to this growing problem. Examples are Drive a senior to the grocery store. Card ideas also included “Translate written materials into Spanish for a monolingual elder” or “Donate an iPod for entertainment “. If the visitor to the exhibit has a special skill, they are asked to volunteer to help a senior experience that -like get a manicure. Exhibit visitors take home the action card/s that inspires them the most and to help impact change in seniors experiencing social isolation in Santa Cruz County.

The exhibition will travel and be replicated in four other California counties, to give more lonely California seniors a chance to organize and create services for loneliness in other areas, through other museums that use art to create community.

Loneliness and isolation in older adults But what has been found is building social connections through the community as MAH has done is what combats this isolation in seniors, in our society. Loneliness puts seniors at risk for depression, cardiovascular failure, insomnia. It can, according to NY Times aging columnist Jane Brody raise levels of stress hormones and inflammation, which in turn can increase the risk of heart disease, arthritis, Type 2 diabetes, dementia, faster and result in cognitive decline and even suicide attempts. It also is a factor in unnecessary placement in nursing homes

Increasing the quality of life is one major answer to loneliness. The primary way to bring more joy into a senior’s life is regaining a foothold in town or village, something that this type of community art exhibit and geriatric care managers both have made a major platform in their work. Nina Herndon a pioneer in quality of life in geriatric care management’s chapter in Handbook of Geriatric Care management where she outlines how care managers can deliver this service to conquer loneliness in seniors

Do You Have a Marketing Message That Works for Concierge Seniors Who Need Geriatric Care Management?

August 9, 2018

Concierge Seniors are the segment of the market ALCA and GCM practitioners must reach. Why because they are the only clients who can afford care management long term because it clost 4-5 thousane a month and Medicare does not cover it.

Marketing your existing or new Aging Life or GCM business is vital to growth, but where you spend your marketing dollars? What marketing tactics make the most sense for you? Where will you reach your concierge client base best?

So How Do you reach these top 10% seniors?

Aging life or geriatric care manager must offer different benefits hyper-attention to seamless care to attract athese top 10% concierge clients who can afford your services long term.

This is where your marketing strategy comes into play. Before the business can start generating large revenue, a concierge marketing strategy and sales techniques must be in place.

Your benefits to this democraphic must be communicated to the concierge customer

The benefit’s include

You will deliver exclutive professional solutions to the grueling aging care decisions families and clients must make so they will get the gold standard care they deserve

Your your 5-star service offers expert professional answers for the tough choices aging family members must make about elder housing, medical care, personal care, quality of life, finances, end of life and the myriad mind-boggling decisions they face.

Your concierge marketing message must give this information to the client and the whole aging family in the support system and can transform the family and ensure you gain clients.

Learn 5 critical success steps to start or run a profitable, GCM business, including marketing to Concierge clients with your mission, from Cathy Cress MSW, the author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management now in its 4^th edition. Sign Up Now

Sign up for this limited enrollment webinar that will teach you to sidestep the 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start businesses and fail within the first 18 months.

See you there.

Cathy Cress MSW

Do You Partner With Wealth Managers To Reach Care Management Concierge Clients?

July 30, 2018

Wealth management banks are increasingly using geriatric care managers to serve their clients.

Bank of America’s U.S. Trust and Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo Private Bank, Morgan Stanley, and Northern Trust and some of these trust departments turned wealth managers that use or partner with care managers. They serve Concierge clients with assets over and above a million dollars and want to work with geriatric care managers to lighten their own load. A care manager can handle the health care and psychosocial while their handle their area of expertise, financial management of a client’s assets.

When you market to wealth managers, you have to show them the benefits of using a geriatric care manager.

Show them the BENEFIT of your GCM Service to the wealth manager including you as a geriatric care manager will:

Do In-depth assessment initial of aging clients health and psychosocial status
Assess the client’s level of competency to make financial decisions.
Collaborate to create a long-term care plan for clients who wish to stay at home and TO needs to plan accordingly for the cost of care.
Collaborate to create a long-term care plan for clients who wish to move or need to move to a higher level of care
access community resources for their parent’s care.
Monitor the status of an older client and report back to the family and financial
Advise when a higher level of care is needed
Monitor weekly so problems not become a crisis and are solved preventatively
Organize community resources for clients so have the highest quality of healthcare and quality of life
Make clients feel engaged with a health and social services concierge who will help the trust offer guide them to the BEST care.

Make sure the wealth manager knows a professional geriatric care manager is:
visiting/monitoring
Advocating for the clients
sending a monthly report on client’s health/social situation
Emailing reports and updates on client
delivering prevention rather than crisis management
Managing clients with mental health problems
Managing adult siblings who disrupt older clients care through sibling fights
Managing dysfunctional families
Facilitating family meetings to come to an agreement about care for an elder with dysfunctional families

For help in setting up a Concierge Care Management Service and Marketing to clients that will refer to you sign up for my 1 hour

Want to make serve concierge clients and families that will make your a business profitable? Join me for my free webinar, “Start and Run a Profitable Geriatric Care Business” on August 22. Learn how to transform your GCM entrepreneurial dream into a money-making business with 5 profit driven steps including serving concierge clients

Learn these 5 Critical Steps to Financial success including how to:

- Identify VIP and Concierge Clients and, What They Want from a GCM\
- Develop Products for VIP Concierge Clients,

from Cathy Cress, MSW, author of the book known as the bible of geriatric care management. Learn how to transform your GCM entrepreneurial idea into a profitable reality before you even open your doors.

Sign Up For My Free Webinar

Did You Find Elder Fiscal Abuse Over the Holidays?

January 6, 2018

When you visited an elder family member over the holidays did you see something ” fishy” going on with their finances?? Was money missing from their accounts, expensive items purchased that the elder did not buy. Are they getting calls for donations from odd sources. All this can be elder fiscal abuse.This type of elder bank robbery represents a 36 billion heist and growing

Fiscal Elder abuse can be detected during the holiday season by visiting family / Paula Span, in her New Old Age column in the New York Times gave some very savvy tips that you should check out.

The worst perpetrators are not professional con artists. The most dangerous elder financial abusers aren’t folks running a scam like Bernie Madoff or crooks offering free lunches to retirees then swindling their money. Vicious financial abusers are most frequently the older person’s own family.

All we have to do is look at the infamous Brooke Astor case. Her son Anthony was convicted of siphoning millions and sentenced to one to three years in prison.
After the trial, one prosecutor called it “grand theft Astor,” with Mrs. Astor’s son on an “a six-year crime spree involving a series of larcenies”
A survey of State Adult Protective Abuse of Adults Over Sixty showed that the most common fiscal abuser was a son or daughter. Adult children perpetrated 33 % of the fiscal exploitation substantiated by APS. Other family members were the next biggest group of fiscal abusers investigated by APS. These other kin represented almost 22% of the financial abuser reported nationwide to adult protective services . So schooling midlife adult children visiting over the holidays to do some discreet detective work to check, desks bank account etc. What is important is they are not confrontive with the parent but to present questions as support for Mom and Dad
What are red flags for adult fiscal abuse
Financial abuse can have many faces
➢ Someone paying bills but bills are not paid
➢ Money missing from accounts
➢ Family member /caregiver withdrawing large amounts of money from accounts
➢ Someone taking money under false pretenses,
➢ forgery
➢ forced property transfers
➢ purchasing expensive items with the older person’s money without permission
➢ denying the older person access to his or her own funds or home.
➢ Scams perpetrated by salespeople
Elders rarely report elder abuse according to a Met life study on the crime. Only the tip of the iceberg of this con is reported for various reasons. Seniors often believe that they are responsible for allowing themselves to be swindled or abused. They frequently fear they will be placed in a nursing home if they report the crime. Older victims hold back in turning the perpetrator in because they are afraid the person will harm them further. And finally, since the tormentor is often a son or daughter their motherly urge is to protect the criminal in their nest.

If You saw fiscal abuse during the Holiday season visit to loved ones. report it to Adult Protective Services and call an aging life care manager . They are experts at helping you make sure this does not happen in the future with vulnerable elders.

What’s a Filial Crisis in the Nearly Normal Family?

September 7, 2017

In the nearly normal aging family when the parent figure in family ages and begins to suffer the losses of getting old. Then the filial crisis occurs. What’s that-? The midlife adult children need to learn to learn to balance love and duty to their aging parents with independence. These midlife children must create a two-way relationship instead of the parent sending, love, money and be nurturing only one way. This throws adult children in a nearly normal family into a tailspin. It has always been a one-way street – ending with them. Were they selfish – no? That’s what good parents do- nurture their children through all the stages of life. However, this new stage takes a two-way streetaby

Baby boomer children, are shocked and baffled when their now aging parents are no longer that John Wayne father figure who can root out every bad guy depending only on his gun and horse. When their Dad or Mom need to ask for support following to loss of health in old age, their adult children are thrown into crisis. This crisis has been labeled a filial crisis by pioneering social worker Margaret Blenkner. Blenkner, a breaker of new ground in the social sciences was the first director of the Benjamin Rose Institute in Cleveland and introduced the concept of the filial crisis. This crisis, she theorized, happened when the adult child realized that their parents were not invulnerable. Like the Twin towers crumbling after America ‘s 911, these adult children saw their impregnable parents start to disintegrate and with it the supportive bulwarks f After a life time of seeing their parents as the indomitable during their often indulged, financial, economic and emotional support, even in their children mid-life.

This filial crisis is, in essence, a new developmental phase in life, the loss of your parent’s independence and their dependence on you.

The healthy family is also thrown off balance by this shock to the system. The person who took the lead role on the family stage has not shown up or forgets their lines.At this giant pause in family play, the family system, even in the normal family must face the loss of control in the system because the parents or parent figures usually have that control. When they can no longer manage on their own, or function as the main gear or guide that moves the family system forward even the normal family is thrown off balance.

Professionals Check out my book Care Managers Working With the Aging Family , with its chapter Loss Dependence, “Filial Maturity and Homeostasis in the Aging Family“, Leonie Nowitz and Cathy Cress, Jones and Bartlett, to learn more about a Filial Crisis in the Nearly Normal Aging Family

Do You Partner With Wealth Managers To Reach Care Management Concierge Clients?

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