parent care crisis Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

Emergency Go Binder -Family Caregivers Need One in Pandemic

August 13, 2020

In An Emergency, I Panicked

I live in Santa Cruz County, Ca. , where the disaster of COVID stalks us but we had a double disaster with one of the 30 fires begun by lightning strikes all over California. Our fire set the Santa Cruz mountains, with ancient 3000-year-old redwoods, ablaze, and caused 70,000 evacuations ,as the firefighters did not have enough fire personnel to fight the fire. There were so many fires statewide that all firefighters in the state were not enough to fight the blazes. In addition to the horror, the fast-spreading fire, our three assigned planes to drop water on the inferno, could not fly as smoke and fog prevented it. They went to other California fires.

I Had No Grab and GO, Binder

When all this was announced by emergency alerts we were told to prepare to evacuate too. In spite of just teaching how to put together a go binder for COVID- I had no go binder myself. I had no list of what I would take in an emergency from a 5 bedroom house with multiple family heirlooms, original art by children, grandchildren, and now famous friends, I had never scanned the multiple photographs of our family in frames to GOOGLE PHOTOS all over the house and those critical important documents like our trust, birth certificates, passports, insurance info in filing to add a go binder. I never made a GO Binder. I am doing it now when the fire is 30% contained.

Prepare for Double Disasters Now

In emergency situations, people sometimes do not think rationally like me. We never know how we are going to react in an emergency until it actually happens. In order to prepare for any situation, hurricanes & COVID, Fires &COVID- creating a grab-and-go binder should be an important part of your shelter in place plan for aging friends or relatives.

With COVID,the older person who is sheltering in place, as safe as the family and elder have been, can still contract COVID and be rushed to the hospital in an emergency. But on top of COVID other emergencies like storms wildfires, floods happen on the top of the pandemic. Think of this summer where hurricanes have already spun up the east coast, making it a double cataclysm of elders’ and family caregivers’ lives.

What to put in Go- Binder

You want and binder with all the emergency contacts, documents like advanced directives, DNR power of attorney and family contacts, You the family cannot physically go into the hospital or evacuate but this Go binder can take your place. With important information about your family member when they are admitted without you by their side. Your go- binder should contain your family members’ most important information and documents. This will include.

Medical information
Emergency Contact List
Advanced Directives
Critical medical, insurance, social security, Trust/will docs
Check out The new 5th edition of my GCM Operations Manual with 5 new COVID-19 Coaching products to use with Telehealth to Assist Family Caregivers to guide older Loved ones to:
Shelter in Place in Long Distance Family
Shelter in Place in Long Local Family
Recover at Home If Do not enter the Hospital
Recover after discharge from the hospital in Long Distance Family
Recover after discharge from the hospital if Local Family
Find Out More Below

GCM Manual New 5th edition

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.

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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.

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

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