Caregiving: A National Workforce Crisis in the Making

June 27, 2014 admin

A study from the National Alliance Caregiving and AARP determined that about half the workforce will be providing some type of eldercare by 2017. ¹

This stunning statistic has been steadily increasing over the past few decades due to increased longevity of people with increasingly significant medical and care needs.

In 2006, the MetLife Mature Market Institute determined that the annual cost to US employers for worker accommodations due to caregiving topped $33 billion. ² This is a significant chunk for the US economy.

On the individual front, caregivers who need to take time off work, cut hours, change jobs or even stop working entirely can significantly impact their personal income, career goals and lifetime financial health.

Working caregivers who cut hours or change jobs may also lose benefits including company health insurance, potentially affecting their personal health over time.

Unfortunately, my experience as a geriatric case manager in the field reveals that family caregivers often spend time and energy in misdirected actions.

These misdirected actions are often the result of unreasonable expectations, lack of knowledge and expertise and absence of meaningful support. The wasted time and effort negatively affects a large circle including the caregiver, their spouse and family, the employer and work teams, and most importantly the family member who is receiving the care.

The possibility to head off a national crisis begins by addressing the implicit and unreasonable expectation that all responsibilities of care must default to the family caregiver.

The “default to the family caregiver” concept is promoted by government, medical institutions, medical providers, cultural institutions unwilling to fund multifaceted support and members of older generations who have not had the experience of parents with these current longevity issues.

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Anne Conrad-Antoville is CEO of Champion Advocates LLC in Portland, Oregon. She has helped hundreds of families with professional geriatric case management services and other supportive services for seniors. Anne is also President of Working Woman Aging Parents.

¹2012 AARP Fact Sheet – Understanding the Impact of Family Caregiving on Work

²MetLife Mature Market Institute®National Alliance for Caregiving
July 2006The MetLife Caregiving Cost Study:Productivity Losses to U.S. Business

Future Vision

Self-Driving Cars: A Solution for Aging Drivers

June 24, 2014 admin

One of the most common concerns I discuss with family caregivers of older adults has to do with driving safety.

Visual deficiencies, slower response time, reduced range of motion in the neck and shoulders and cognitive declines caused by medications, medical conditions and/or various stages of dementia are some of the significant risk factors for senior drivers.

Statistics show us that inexperienced, younger drivers (16-24) are the most prone to be involved in auto collisions and accidents. But, did you know that their experienced older counterparts 75 years old or older rival them in risk?*

Families are struggling with many demands on their time and energy. The rigors of work, maintaining a household, raising children and realizing personal relationships must be kept real beyond a virtual-based existence are already challenging. When we factor in the time needed to take an older family member to medical appointments, trips to a store or social outings to meet friends, we can watch the precious minutes and hours of our day quickly vanish.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to know that the same senior could easily get into a self-driving car and perform those activities on their own or meet someone at a scheduled destination for added assistance?

And, I say “easily” because self-driving cars like some being developed by Google are designed for ease of getting into and out of the car. That freedom would be experienced be everyone involved in that senior’s life.

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Old time friends could stay in touch without waiting outside in the rain for a transport service or having to have a paid caregiver drive them to gather. Instead of scheduling ways around difficult transportation logistics, senior and family members alike can schedule more things to do on their own or together.

*The Hartford: Family Conversations With Older Drivers

Anthony Antoville, CMC is a geriatric case manager with Champion Advocates LLC in Portland, Oregon. Since 1991, he has been helping seniors and their families address transportation concerns among other eldercare issues.

Respect Between Generations

Are You Your Parent’s Secret Emergency Plan?

June 23, 2014 admin

Recently, I received a call from a gentleman in his early eighties, who was caring for his wife with dementia.

He told me, “I’m calling you, because I need an emergency plan if anything happens to me. I need someone who will come in and handle my affairs and my wife’s issues at a moment’s notice. Then my kids, who live in another state, will come and take care of my wife.”

I asked him, if his adult children were aware of this plan he had. No, he hadn’t actually discussed this plan with them, but he was sure it would be fine.

I asked why he thought it was a good plan to wait until an emergency situation to happens, before he could ask for help or let his children know of basic issues in advance. He said bluntly, “Look, I know what I need! I only want someone to be able to come in on a moment’s notice, then my kids will take care of everything.”

This exchange illustrates a common and complex issue that is happening across the country for many families with aging parents. A spouse caring for another spouse who suffers from dementia or another chronic condition will often become fatigued, burned out and develop their own health problems brought on by stress and overwork, thus putting both elders at risk.

Often, the senior providing care will refuse help or underestimate the amount of help that is actually needed.

The adult children are often kept in the dark, while simultaneously being made part of a secret emergency plan that no one has actually examined. The secret plan is revealed only once the crisis hits, and the adult children are caught in a web of issues that are usually serious, intricate and deteriorating rapidly.

For the family members trying to help, coming in at this stage of the crisis can result in significant stress, significant time commitments and significant financial cost. It can negatively impact employment or business and overwhelm personal relationships.

Waiting to respond until a crisis hits almost always results in substantially reduced options for the aging parents and for the family caregiver. Reacting is never planning!

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Open up the conversation with your aging parent sooner than later! Chances are, you already have a feeling that something is going wrong.

Ask your parent how things really are with questions that elicit more than simple “yes” or “no” answers. Ask how tired, stressed or overwhelmed is the parent who is providing care? What are the health and household issues? How much time, energy and work can be realistically expected of other family members, if help is needed?

How do you respond to this information and what are the next steps?

As a geriatric case manager, I highly recommend having a family meeting with a geriatric case manager. Geriatric case managers are aging professionals with broad expertise and knowledge. We can perform assessments based on multiple issues and coordinate planning and services to meet goals for the entire family. Best of all, a geriatric case manager can continue to work with the family and the senior over a period of time, providing continual monitoring, oversight, coordination and support as needed.

Anne Conrad-Antoville is a geriatric case manager with Champion Advocates LLC in Portland, Oregon. She has spent the past 15 years of her professional career successfully troubleshooting complex issues for seniors and their families.

Questioning Aging Answers

Illuminating Better Pathways for Aging

June 20, 2014 admin

Compassionate Aging is a conscious and intent-driven approach to an inherent process of life. To move from an outward view of living, aging and eventually dying, to move towards a revitalized vision that seeks to gain deeper insights as to the inward journey of a life lived, requires us to individually pause, breathe and feel.

To feel beyond our basic physical pleasures and pains and to reach past our surface emotions is not often a practice in our daily lives. We are taught to subjugate, relegate and isolate our feelings and to conceal them from ourselves and others at all costs, except in the most banal forms of expression.

Look around at any moment in your day and you will find much you or I would rather choose to avoid to experience and feel. Our lives are surrounded by visuals and sound bites filled with pain, cruelty and misery. So why feel more deeply, when feeling anything at all touches upon such potential agony?

Because avoidance will only postpone what cannot be denied during the stillness that awaits each of us at that hour of death. Either, our own death or the death of a loved one will reveal regret, sorrow or guilt that has been repressed. Why then accumulate what can be released and recycled into more healthy emotions, thoughts and actions?

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If serious contemplations and considerations regarding aging issues emerge out of the din of the pervasive knee-jerk reactions to our current and ever burgeoning aging population scenario, then this website and its articles will have achieved an intended goal. And yet, it will be only a starting place from which to initiate this quest for compassionate aging.

Anthony Antoville is COO of Champion Advocates LLC and Co-Founder of compassionateaging.org

Cherishing the Future of All Generations!