PTSD Family Caregivers Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

My DAD’s PTSD – Support Biden’s Infrastructure Plan Rebuilding VA Hospitals

May 24, 2021

Stalag-VII-A Moosburg Bavaria

My father was held in a prison camp during World War II. He was an officer and his camp only housed the higher ranks. He never spoke about the war. He was a World War II navigator shot down in Poland and transferred to Stalag-VII-A Moosburg Bavaria. He returned home a broken man with PTSD, never took a bus, drove or flew on a plane again. His disability, like so many vets was untreated for 50 years. He worked as an advertising agent ala Mad Men and drank like Don Draper. Our family crumbled into a dysfunctional maelstrom, as most families do. Literally saved by the Palo Alto VA GRECC Program in his late 60’s, he lived a very good life with my family for his last 25 years.

He never sought VA treatment for his severe PTSD for for 5 decades.

VA Hospital Changed My Dad’s Life After 50 years of Untreated PTSD

.When he came to live with me, after my brother and mother’s death, I got him enrolled in the VA and the incredible GRECC Program and he was treated at the Menlo Park VA Hospital Menlo Park Division (MPD) campus where they provide a broad range of Veteran services, including a National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and San Jose VA Hospitals for the rest of his life.

They turned his life around and made his last 2r years joyful ,mentally and physically health, plus allowed him to die at home through the VA Homemaker and Home Health Aide Program

The VA Hospitals where he was treated do not need renovation but many many VA hospitals are falling apart.This led me to write an entire chapter in the 4th Edition of Handbook of Geriatric Care Management to help care managers to navigate through the VA.

Biden To Liberate $ to Rebuild aging VA Hospitals

President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan includes $18 billion to upgrade and replace aging Veterans Affairs hospitals, but the agency needs five times that much to bolster facilities and medical staff, a Democratic lawmaker said on Thursday.

Mark Takano, chairman of the House of Representatives Veterans’ Affairs Committee told reporters , the VA’s 1,700 hospitals, clinics and medical facilities had a median age of 58 years, compared with just 11 years for private hospitals in the United States, he said, noting that 69% of VA hospitals were more than 50 years old.

Support Biden’s Infrastructure Plan to help caregivers and rebuild the VA

The infrastructure package, which must be approved by Congress, would also help the roughly 200,000 veterans who leave military service each year to transition to civilian jobs, and boost funding to help the estimated 2.5 million veteran-owned small businesses, officials said.

As so many geriatric care managers and Home care agencies serve aging Vets , take this memorial day to contact your congressman and senators to support Biden’s infrastructure plan , to help rebuild the crumbling VA hospitals,which is now going to The Senate after being passed in the House. The Senate republicans are not going to allow it into law. Support this plan with it caregiver infrastructure Plan, so that you have more resources to help your aging clients.

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Genogram -Tools to Relieve a Family Caregiver-

September 9, 2019

What should be in your caregiver assessment toolbox?

A tool that you can tools use to solve the caregiver and care receiver’s problems you found in your care plan is a genogram.

A geriatric care managers assessment of the family caregiver is critical. Caregivers can and do fall apart. If you already did your caregiver assessment- great. But the extended family of the care receiver (client) should be assessed to find their strengths, weaknesses, dangers and real ability to help render caregiving services. This is where a genogram comes in.

A genogram allow you to see family patterns on a single page

Using a tool called a genogram can really show you the view of a family on a chart.Patterns in a family, especially the aging family that geriatric care managers and ALCA members serve, can be seen in a genogram showing you, for example, the generational cut off that happens over and over or alcoholism, or spousal abuse. You can see the weakness of family ties and where the care managers needed to focus to help the family get care for an older person.

A genogram allow you to see family support

A good genogram can be helpful in assessing the care receiver’s family support network and each relative’s relationship to the older client. Your genogram when paired with a psychosocial assessment, can help you assess whether the older client is living with a helpful spouse or partner, living with a difficult spouse, has relationship with an ex spouse, has cooperative and supportive children or grandchildren, has fighting or alienated children or grandchildren, has warring or alienated stepchildren or adoptive, has several children but only one child who “does it all,”.

In other words you pull up a traffic light, it is green, yellow or dangerous red. The genogram also can help tell the GCM whether you have ex spouses or partners who want to participate as caregivers and what their emotional relationship is the care receiver. In other words is there green-lighted support or red saying stop here-when the family caregiver desperately needs your GPS to find that that new road.

What Does The VA Offer PTSD Familes and Professionals Who Help?

August 15, 2015

The National Center for PTSD, through the Department of Veterans Affairs, has two sections or portals for help. One is for Vets Family and Friends and the other for Professionals. I can open either door .

As I have said in my blog, I am a daughter of a PTSD Vet. I am also a geriatric care manager who just included a chapter on the VA for Aging Vets in the 4^th edition of Handbook of Geriatric Care Management. Dr. Len Kaye edited the chapter graciously.

I wanted the chapter added because as a GCM I know how hard it for professionals is to access VA care and unravel the many times cloaked VA services . As a daughter a PTSD Vet, whose Dad went untreated for 50 years, I know the magic of the VA in turning VA PTSD vets and their broken families around- and the work that desperately must to be done by the VA to save these vets and their fractured kin.