Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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How to Make a Pre-emptive not Panicked Senior Move

January 14, 2020

 

Before Donna Rankin Love wrote her new book about living in senior residential care, she made that move, not as her last choice but as a well thought out choice -a pre-emptive move.  ALCA and geriatric care managers want aging adults to make a move by choice rather than a crisis move. The 90-year-old author has a new book out that I think all Assisted Living Directors, geriatric care managers and any in the field of aging should purchase. The Kind of Village This Is: Life in a Senior Residential Community 

 

Donna’s Pre-Emptive Move

Donna watched her four adult sons grapple with their angry aging Dad’s denial of his deterioration, crisis-driven nursing home placement, subsequent failed attempt at-home care and final placement he did not choose. His overwhelmed caregiver son’s had to make the choice for him. Donna decided to get ahead of that curve and spare her sons a second epic parent drama. She also wanted to make her own choices about her future. She had written 3 books after 80 walked across the United States for Peace followed that up by walking across Russia- all in her 60’s.

This woman already had the courage to make hard choices and understood the rewards. Donna had a gorgeous, dollhouse home, complete with a labyrinth in Capitola California and loads of friends. Yet for a year she visited many CCRC’s.  co-housing communities and other senior housing choices to see what would be a fit for her. She was shopping as if trying on dresses she would wear in her future.

After a year of checking the senior housing market, she invested in a place that worked for her when she had no health problems and could make her own choice to relocate.

What she settled on was on an assisted living community in the California wine country. Her reasoning was it was a community that fit her like that perfect sheath. It was comfortable, had a community of residents who were compatible and was warm and friendly. It mattered that the mission that matched her own and she was living near a son who would be helpful but she was not dependent upon. After three years she moved to a new facility as her initial choice had 4 directors over 3 years and she wanted a financially stable place to live. Finally, she settled on Spring Lake Village.  She still travels with her college roommate drives to visit her many family members in the Bay area and was traveling Mexico this December. She also blogs regularly  at Writing For Our Lives 

Not every older person should move

Most elders prefer to age in place. It is important that you realize the losses in moving as an elder and how the move will replace them But if you do see this in your future, you need to be realistic about future losses and gage whether the family will be there to support you at home. Check in to whether you have the money to afford care in-home and consider the chaos for your family by putting off planning for your aging decrements.

Aging Life or Geriatric Care Manager can be of help to and elder or family in considering whether to move or actually moving to have a smooth well-planned pre and post-move. My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual shows you step by step on how to set up a GCM  move management service.

Save your family from last-minute emergency calls from the ER- have your housing and aging bases covered. A move to a higher level of care may be a good choice and if so make it pre-emptive moves, like Donna, ahead of the curve. She is also available to speak at CCRC or Assisted Living about her book and the value of planning ahead for a move at donna684@comcast.net.

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, Assisted Living, Assisted Living & Geriatric Care Managers, Assisted Living Crisis, Choice to Move Elder, geriatric social worker, Move Management, Moving To CCRC, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Pre-Emptive Move Tagged With: aging family crisis, aging life and geraitric care manager, Aging Life Care Association, aging move, CCRC, decision to move, geriatric, geriatric care manager, legal issues moving aging parent, move, move elder, pre-emptive move, senior co-housing, senior move, senior moving

Moving A Parent in – Anxiety and Depression About The Move

January 7, 2014

Dec-Xmas-all-of-us-.jpg

 

 

 Considering Moving an Aging Parent into Your Home?

After the holiday when adult children gather and find a parent so disabled that they should not live alone anymore, then consider moving a parent in. I did this with great success in the ’80s as you can see by the photo above. But I teach geriatric care management and knew exactly what I needed to do to make it work. So if you found coal in your parent’s stocking – do not move the coal to your house, consider what changes you need to make or if you should even do this by hiring a geriatric care manager first to help you decide then help make a successful move and living situation. A recent PEW study shows the number of multi-generational households has jumped from 6.2 million to 7.1 million in the last two years — a faster growth rate that the previous eight years combined.

 What a Geriatric Care Manager Can Do to Help Your Decide

Before moving a parent into an intergenerational family situation, both a parent and adult child should consider having an Aging Life Care Manager assess the older person with a psychosocial assessment. The GCM can use the psychosocial assessment to assess depression, anxiety both of which may result from such a move after the elder given up their own space, their home.

 Losses of Moving For An Elder

BeccaJulia-94.jpgAn elder’s home reflects their history their own individuality, their privacy, and all their memories. The GCM can create interventions that the adult child can carry out to help with these mental health issues. There are also the issues of loss as the aging parent may after giving up their home, privacy, and history encased in their furniture pictures and the sense of home they have given up.

 The Anxiety and Depression of Moving for Elder

The aging parent can bring furniture and photos into that reflect their old home, but the deep feeling of loss, expressed in perhaps unanticipated anxiety and depression needs attention. I would certainly be consulting their primary physician but perhaps, new activities with the family, outside social engagement, quality of like interventions like continuing to go to baseball games, a knitting group, play bridge, attend yoga or travel, as examples.

 

Blending families does not always go smoothly and his best approached with caution and professional help before all make a decision to cohabit.

HVC-85th_20130525-233904_1.jpgA geriatric care manager or aging life care manager can also help your parents get engaged in outside activities by doing a quality of life assessment to find out the activities they enjoy and get them engaged in what they like to do in the community. This was the secret of my success. My mother in law and Dad moved in from different sides of the US for widely divergent reasons. ( pictures in family Photo above).His home was flooded by the storm of the century in 1989 after I had just Becca-Julia-Pop.JPGremodeled it and Becca my mother in law was living with the ” Love of her Life” and he had a stroke.

She was by nature a social butterfly. So I got her engaged in a women’s group at the local senior center, chair exercise, the blind center as she had macular degeneration and Sunday’s at the local Presbyterian church.

My Dad was more a recluse having PTSD from World War 2 and eventually I got him involved in the Catholic church, Cindy’s Celebrations local faith-based senior services where he and Becca went to lunch once a week. They celebrated their birthday, took them to great restaurants each week and played the big band music they loved in the Van. I arranged all transportation through our senior transportation LifeLine, both churches provided their own transportation as did Cindy’s Celebration

 

Filed Under: Adult children, Aging, aging family crisis, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Emotional Quality of Life, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Move Management, moving parent in your home, Moving To CCRC Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent moving in, Anxiety Assessment for an older person, anxiety in an elder, care manager, case manager, elder depression, geriatric care manager, moving elder, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, senior moving

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