Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

  • Home
  • Products
    • GCM Manual New 5th edition
    • Books
    • Geriatric Care Management – 4th Edition
    • Mom Loves You Best
    • Care Managers
  • Online Classes
    • Recommendations
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Past Webinars
  • Speaking
  • About
    • Recommendations
    • Interviews
  • Blog
    • Aging
    • Geriatric Care Manager
    • Siblings
    • Webinar
  • Contact

Long Distance Care Provider Help on Mother’s Day

May 8, 2013

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

 

If you are a long distance care provider visiting Mom on Mother’s day you can give more than a gift. You can make connections with her formal and informal supports to offer on –going buoys to your aging Mom. You can make good contacts with the informal support network of others who see the your Mom regularly (friends, church members). These contacts will be a great source of information when you, the long distance caregiver get back home.

 

Friends in spiritual groups are a really important contact. If she goes to church a synagogue or mosque, maybe go with her. Get the name of contacts there who might help with driving her to services or find out if the spiritual groups has pick up service for elders.

Contact formal supports. If your mother is in a senior activity program in the community, introduce yourself to the head contact and ask if they will give you periodic updates via e-mail or text. For example, my dad was in a social day program. If your relative is in a similar program, have someone in the program report to you on a regular basis. – Text – e-mail, phone calls, stamped self-addressed envelopes -all good.

 

If your mother is in a community program such as one for exercise, art, knitting, or some sort of support group, make an appointment with them and introduce yourself. Set up periodic reports via e-mail, text, mail  or phone.

 

Take home the telephone directory. Better yet use the web. Find the web site of the local Senior Information and Referral program from the goverment’s  Elderlocator . They will give you the Senior I&R contact in your Mom’s area. Maybe get in touch with a senior information and referral professional ahead of the visit. Ask that Senior Information and Referral professional for suggestions any community programs you think your Mom might want to join.

This is the gift that will keep on giving-  improved quality of life for Mom and peace of mind for you.

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: Adult Day Care, Adult Day Health Care, aging family, Aging In Place, aging parent, aging parent care, AOA, Area Agency on Aging, art therapy, caregiver burden, caregiver overwhelm, caregiver stress, case manager, Continuum of Care, elders emotional quality of life, emotional quality of life, exercise groups for the elderly, family caregivers, Formal supports, friendship and quality of life, geraitric care manager, Geriatric Assessment, increasing quality of life, informal supports of an older person, joy in older people, knitting groups for the elderly, long distance care provider, long distance caregiver, Marriage and Family Therapist, Medicare, MFT, Mothers Day visit, My Geraitric Care Management Operations Manual, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, preventative care for elders, Professional in aging, Quality of Life, quality of life assessment, senior centers, Senior Information and Referral, senior non profits, spiritual supports in aging

Care Plan Interventions- How To Do Multiple Sub Interventions

March 24, 2013

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

The GCM or aging professional can recommend more than one intervention to solve a single problem. For example, an additional intervention to assist live-in lover and care giver Sally Hemingway to get respite from caregiving for her male companion Tom Jefferson could be as follows:

Problem: Problem- Caregiver Sally Hemingway is in need of respite

Intervention:

1. Arrange trial day at Elderday day Adult Day Program. This will provide Sally with some needed relief and a few hours to take care of her own personal needs. Although he has resisted the idea of being left at a center, Mr. Jefferson was willing to give it a try, when it was posed as a card group. On Tuesday and Thursday there is an active card group playing bridge. Mr. Jefferson is an avid bridge player. He had been apprehensive about being at this complex because it has a Nursing Home, along with Day programs, Assisting Living, apartments, memory center and a very busy activities calendar. One can come and go from the social program and participate in other activities within the complex.

a. Interventions GCM to a arrange trial day at Elderday Adult Day Program. This will provide Sally with some needed relief and a few hours to take care of her own personal needs. Although Mr. Jefferson has resisted the idea of being left at a center, he was willing to give it a try, when it was posed as a card group. On Tuesday and Thursday there is an active card group playing bridge. Mr. Roosevelt is an avid Rummy player. He had been apprehensive about being at this complex because it has a Nursing Home, along with Day programs, Assisting Living, apartments, memory center and a very busy activities calendar. One can come and go from the social program and participate in other activities within the complex.

b. GCM work with Sally to arrange Trial Day with program manager on a Tuesday or Thursday for cards.

c. GCM to stop by while he is in Day Program, meet Sally for coffee to help her with her anxiety about leaving him.

d. If trial works, GCM will arrange for half day once or twice a week (any 4 hours for $22) to give Sally an afternoon to take care of her own business

e. GCM follow up with Marsha Dowling MSE, Director o the Elderday Social Day Care program.

Because the family and Mr. Jefferson and Sally want Sally to stay as Mr. Jefferson’s care provider you have crafted multiple intervention for respites and multiple sub interventions or steps to achieve that intervention, in this case respite.

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: Adult Day Care, Adult Day Health Care, aging adults living together, aging family, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, care monitoring, care monitoring visits, care plan as saftey net, care plan interventions, care planning, caregiver assessment, caregiver burnout, caregiver overload, caregiver overwhelm, caregiver stress, case manager, Functional Assessment, geraitric assessment, geraitric care manager, geriatric care management, geriatric care managers, Handbook of Geriatric Care Management third edition, live in aging lovers, live-in relationships as caregivers, long distance care provider, Marriage and Family Therapist, merging care plans, My Geraitric Care Management Operations Manual, National Assocaition of Geraitric Care Managers, older couples and living together, Professional in aging, Psychosocial assessment

How Do You Create a Care Plan?-Finding Interventions

March 12, 2013

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

To create a care plan’s interventions to client’s problems you need a continuum of care. How do you find this continuum? As a geriatric care manager or aging professional, you should already have significant experience in this continuum before you open your door for business. A core competence to open a geriatric care management business or any other aging related business is to know your need to know your community’s continuum of care from day one.

As your care plan or the safety net you build or expand around your client web billows, expands, compresses, and changes constantly, you need the real Web to help you keep up. You can access most areas of the continuum of care and all its changes (new businesses, new senior services offered in part through the Internet. You can access your county’s or Area Agency on Aging Web site, which will usually list all the current senior services available in your town. Almost every county in the US has an area agency on aging and most have a web site that lists all the services available to seniors by category, such as nursing home, assisted living, home care agency, support groups, senior transportation etc.

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: Area Agency on Aging, care plan, care plan as saftey net, care plan interventions, care planning, case manager, Cathy Jo Cress, Charlottes Web, Continuum of Care, Functional Assessment, geraitric assessment, geraitric care manager, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, internet and caregiving, My Geraitric Care Management Operations Manual, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, parent care crisis, Professional in aging, Psychsocial Assessment, red flags for a family meeting

What is a Care Plan?

March 1, 2013

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

How do you combine care plans from multiple assessments? First let’s look at what is a care plan. After the initial assessment information is gathered from multiple assessments, a comprehensive list of the client’s problems and interventions should be generated. This list is called a care plan.

A care plan is a strategy to repair the holes in your clients’ web or safety net. Your client is experiencing problems because the web of support or his or her own functioning has deficits or holes. The care plan suggests a way to repair those holes by recommending the right services at the right time for the right amount of money. As I have mentioned many times, you are Charlotte, the crafty spider from Charlotte’s Web, using the large continuum of care in your community to recommend ways to repair holes in the older person’s personal web. But Charlotte is spinning multiple threads, much like the Internet. More about basic care plans next blog.

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging parent, aging parent crisis, Care Managers Working with the Aging Family, care plan, care plan as saftey net, Charlottes Web, Funtional Assessment, geraitric assessment, geraitric care manager, geriatric care manager, Handbook of Geriatric Care Management third edition, IADL assessment, informal caregiver, merging care plans, My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual, National Assocaition of Geraitric Care Managers, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, private duty home health agnecy, Professional in aging, Psychosocial assessment

Pew Trust Study on Caregivers Shows they are Tech Savvy

September 18, 2012

cress3e_20120811-190334_1.jpg

 

A just released stuffy by the Pew Family Trust on Care, Pew Internet Project and supported by funding from the California HealthCare Foundation found a fact professional ‘s working with seniors already know – almost a third of us are family caregivers. That includes midlife siblings, and wives. The much anticipated study found the 30% of US adults are caregivers.

 

Plus the study confirmed another fact that caregivers and aging families know but is now substantiated. Technology and the Internet is a key tool that sibling and more often spouse caregivers use to render care to aging family members.

 

According to the Pew report caregivers are “ voracious health information consumers. They outpace other Internet users often by double-digit margins,

Family caregivers are use technology as a care-giving tool. Compared with their noncaregiving peers, family caregivers are more likely to

• have a cell phone or other mobile device, such as a smartphone (90% vs 82%);

• use the Internet or email (79% vs. 71%);

• have a desktop computer (64% vs. 58%);

• have a laptop computer (55% vs. 51%).

• According to the Pew Report:

Are you a family, sibling or spousal caregiver and use technology? Check out this report.

 

If you are a aging professional, this is important information on how to reach your potential clients.Professional geriatric care managers  should check out Julia Menack’s Technology to Support Aging In Place in the third edition of Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 2011.

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging parent care, aging technology, California HealthCare Foundation, caregiver burden, Family Caregivers using technology, geriatric care manager, Handbook of Geriatric Care Management third edition, internet and caregiving, Jones and Bartlett, midlife siblings, peace of mind, Pew Family Trust on Care, Professional in aging, sibling, siblings and caregiving

  • 1
  • 2
  • Next Page »

Contact

Use the form on the
Contact page to email Cathy.

Email

Connect with Cathy

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

  • Home
  • GCM Manual New 5th edition
  • Books »
  • Services »
  • About
  • Recommendations
  • Blog »
  • Contact

Copyright © 2012–2021 CressGCMConsult & Cathy Cress - Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management | Site Designed by Kissa's Kreations