Author: Martha Jocis

Martha is an educator, author, editor and consultant. She has spent the last 10 years taking care of aging family members and as a result, has learned a great deal through first hand experience. Going from caring for little ones to caring for the aging, Martha has a compassion for helping others.

Millennials As Caregivers

We typically think of family caregivers as women in the Baby Boomer generation, age late 40s to late 50s. But new information from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving reveals that a full 10 percent of family caregivers are Millennials. That’s 10 million people!

The typical profile of this person is someone who is 27 years old, works part time, and has household income below the national medium.

Why this increase?

One reason is some Baby Boomers need a little help with older loved ones.  And it seems Millennials are actually happy to help.  Of course there are some circumstances where Millennials have had to step up for the care of their own parents.  After all, diseases like early onset Alzheimer’s are being diagnosed more frequently.  But for the most part, Millennials are helping Boomers take care of what is left of the Greatest Generation and perhaps the first wave of Boomers.

Millennials who are supposed to be at a stage of life where they are absorbed in their own careers and families.  Often they are balancing a career, getting advanced degrees, caregiving and raising children, making them some of the youngest to handle sandwich generation stress.   This makes caregiver Millennials a unique group.  Of those 10 million Millennial caregivers, there is an equal split between men and women.  That’s a little different than the typical caregiver demographic, which skews toward women.  But Millennials attitudes toward masculinity have changed and men are more likely to see themselves as nurturers, too.  For additional data on millennial caregivers, see this article.

Technology Millennials Use

The genus™ App is truly something Millennials gratefully grasp onto.  They grew up with technology and embrace the opportunity to use it to provide the best care possible for their loved ones.   With so many Millennials having to work far from where their parents live, having a tool like the genus™ App allows them to fulfill their career goals while attending to family responsibilities.   They are thrilled to have a platform that coordinates outside help, visits, medical information, and valuable resources, all ready to be accessed at the touch of a button.

Emotional Safety for Your Person of Care

When taking care of an aging or chronically ill loved one, we need to be concerned wGivers-of-careith several types of safety:  physical, emotional, financial, and spiritual.  We often do a stellar job of taking care of their physical needs, but what about their emotional needs?

An elderly person needs to feel safe, remain close to other people and believe that his life continues to be meaningful. Meeting his/her emotional needs can help avoid depression. Signs that your aging loved one needs more support may include difficulty in sleeping, a poor appetite or an inability to concentrate.  Emotional care for a senior should include steps designed to deal with vulnerability, loneliness, boredom and isolation.

Using Technology to Help

Here is where the genus™ App can help design these next steps.  When the community of care folks (the people you have in your care community on the App) can easily access visitor information and a common schedule; then all can work together seamlessly to provide visits and activities that allow for regular contact with loved ones.   Here you can easily log visits and phone calls.  It is important for all involved to realize that this is not about who visited Mom the most, but rather how we can all work together, making the most of our busy schedules, to provide Mom with the best emotional support there is:  time with loved ones.  Think about how important Mom will feel when she sees her community of loved ones working to give her the best, together.  I know that my mom has frequently commented to her friends how her children are using “the internet” to schedule visits and activities.  She feels honored that such efforts are being made to provide her with best care possible.

Along with making sure our loved ones get regular social contacts, it’s important to note how they are doing physically as well.  In the Health platform of the Genus App, you can track how the patient feels physically each day as well as tracking their mood and mobility factor.  You can then run medical reports periodically to show the doctor.  It could help the doc adjust medications, change medications, or even remove unnecessary meds.  With various folks inputting the data, the App allows for tracking of data in a meaningful way to share with family members and medical professionals as necessary.  You then can have a complete picture of your loved ones’ physical and emotional health, as they are both tied so closely together.

Some tips to remember:

  • Talk with the older person in your family to identify needs. Listen to individual concerns. Don’t assume all elderly are lonely. Encourage the person to express their feelings and be a good listener–ask questions and don’t be judgmental.
  • Be aware of fears. Due to medical conditions, some people lose independence as they grow older. Some elderly people may fear not being able to take care of themselves.
  • Many older people develop depression. Factors such as illness, death of family members and medications all contribute to depression. Don’t be afraid to ask family member if he or she is feeling depressed. Also look for signs, such as withdrawing from family and friends, mood changes, fatigue and weight loss.
  • Understand the need for purpose in an elderly person’s life. With their children grown and retired from their job, an elderly person may feel they are not needed. Many volunteer agencies are geared especially for senior citizens. For example, Senior Corps utilizes senior volunteers in a variety of jobs. In our community, we have an agency called SOC (Society for Older Citizens) that provides all kinds of services for the elderly.
  • Recognize the need for professional help. Some emotional problems will need to be evaluated by a doctor or a qualified mental health professional. For example, if signs of depression persist for more than two weeks and interfere will daily activities, professional help may be needed.
  • Be aware some emotional problems in the elderly may be caused by side effects from medication and certain medical conditions. A physical may help determine if medical problems are contributing to emotional issues.

 

Hiring a Caregiver You Can Trust

It can be so overwhelming deciding what kind of outside help to hire for your aging loved one.  Who should you hire?  How do you find them?  Are they qualified?  Can they be trusted to care for your parent?  What questions should you ask?  What is the cost?  How do I find the best care possible for my parent?

Once you start your research, it is easy to get overwhelmed with all the information out there.  Agencies that earn their money by recommending specific home-care agencies are available BUT they only refer those agencies that pay them a fee.  There are so many of these “placement agencies” ….. Home Instead, A Place for Mom, AgingCare, care.com…. the list goes on.   Talk to your friends to see what they have used and get recommendations.  Use social media to solicit recommendations.  The agencies they recommend can vary from location to location.   Agencies are run by local owners, so getting some advice from local friends and family about local agencies they have had success with is invaluable.

At-home caregivers generally fall into three categories:
  • Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs)
    • have some medical training and must pass an exam to get a license. They usually work under the supervision of registered nurses. In home care nurses can check vital signs, care for wounds, and help with everyday activities such as bathing and eating

(you’ll often hear these referred to as “activities of daily living,” or ADLs)

  • Home Health Aides
    • generally assist with ADLs. And personal care attendants (PCAs)
  • Personal Care Attendants. (PCAs)
    • also sometimes called personal companions, assist with household chores such as cleaning, cooking and shopping

The job descriptions of these caregivers can overlap considerably, and they’re often referred to interchangeably.  You will need to decide whether to go with an established agency or hire a private home-care worker.  Both have advantages and disadvantages.   Of course with an agency you will usually find licensed care workers, but you will also pay more money than private care, in general.   However, with a private homecare worker, you often get more personalized attention.

Valuable Links for Finding the Best Outside Help

The National Association of Area Agencies on Aging (n4a) is the best place to start when looking for home-care agencies.  They are a government service that is not affiliated with one agency over another.  This link will take you to eldercare.gov which is a affiliate of n4a in which they recommend agencies that provide outside help.  https://www.n4a.org/hcbs

When considering an agency, you may want to check out this article and the corresponding links from the National Association for Home Care and Hospice.   They list some great questions to ask when interviewing home-care agencies as well as a database of agencies.

Whether hiring a private home-care provider OR an agency, here is a list of questions to consider as well.  This article provided by the Mayo Clinic breaks down the questions depending on whether you are going with private care or agency care.  This is a good article to read in helping you to decide which course of care to take.

Finding the best home care for your loved one can be a daunting task, but if you are armed with the proper information and questions, it will make the job a bit easier.  Remember to involve your home care aides in the use of the genusConnect™ App.  Their use will provide you with the best up to date information on the care of the patient as well as provide you with tools to make your job easier.   The home-care workers will love the feedback you can leave them within the app.  genusConnect™ provides you with a valuable communication tool to help you provide the best care, together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You May Not Remember, But I Will Never Forget

Givers-of-careSay the title of this article out loud to yourself.   Let that sink in for a moment.  Can you picture yourself silently saying this to your aging parent who struggles to remember the past?  Now picture yourself saying it with a smile in your heart.  You are building new memories that you will have for a lifetime.  Make them count using the power of photos.

This is something I tried to remind myself of often when spending time with my dad during the final stages of his Alzheimer’s and I find myself doing the same as I enjoy time today with my mom.   That cruel disease of Dementia, stealing the memories of our loved ones, can be discouraging.  But if you try to remember that you are building new memories, while leaning on the old memories, you will one day look back and be glad you thought of it this way.  I know I am.

Using the Power of Photos to Build New Memories

One possible way to create new fun memories with your loved one who suffers from memory loss is to use photos to stimulate conversations about the past.   Photographs from the past allow patients to reminisce about pleasant times in their lives. Photographs from the present help patients relate to their current situation. The patient experiencing memory loss is able to “remember or recognize someone they love and know in a world where so many things are now unfamiliar to them.”2 A study by Ellen Mahoney of Boston College found that, in one instance, photos distracted the Alzheimer’s patient from the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.

 

Using the “Moments” platform of the Genus™ App, you and all the other members of your caring community can use a consistent set of photos to work with your aging loved one.  From the app, you can upload the photos you take to a digital photo frame for your loved one to enjoy.  My mother comments almost daily on how much she loves the photos we send to her via our phones to her photo frame.  It makes her feel part of her children’s and grandchildren’s lives to see the photos they send from their various adventures.   Of course she adores the photos we take when we’re with her as well, but she really benefits from seeing “surprise” photos pop up on her frame from her loved ones’ comings and goings.

 

10 Photo Tips for Families Facing Alzheimer’s

Compiled by the Alzheimer’s Association® in partnership with Shutterfly, here are 10 ways you can help lift a person with dementia to reminisce:

  1. Place photos in chronological order.Photo books can be great tools for showing someone’s life history or story. Start your photo book at the beginning of the person’s life and lead up to the present day. Organize the book around key moments and concentrate on happy occasions to assist with engagement. Also, keep the design simple, with one or two pictures per page, so the photos are easy to focus on.
  2. Show relationships. To help spark recognition of family members, dedicate a section to each person. Choose photos that include the person with the family member from different life stages and place them in chronological order.
  3. Select meaningful moments. Be sure to include photos that reflect the person’s meaningful life moments and depict his/her favorite hobbies or activities, such as weddings, graduations and vacations.
  4. Make it an activity.Work with the individual as appropriate to create the book, and share memories and conversation as you put it together.
  5. Engage in conversation.Ask open-ended questions about the people or events in the photo. How were you feeling in that picture? Tell me about your brother. What are some of your favorite childhood stories? Tell me more about this picture. The answers are less important than the conversation and engagement.
  6. Share your own memories.As part of the conversation, share your memories and feelings when looking at the pictures. Answer some of the same questions you’re asking the person with Alzheimer’s.
  7. Connect, don’t correct.This is more about making a connection and sharing memories. Focus on connecting with the person, not correcting them.
  8. Revisit frequently. Take the time to frequently revisit memories using the photos. Do what works best for the individual. It may be daily or weekly, depending on the person.
  9. Mix it up.Don’t discuss the same set of photos week after week. To help keep it fresh and interesting, discuss various parts of the book with different people and events on a regular basis.
  10. Move at a comfortable pace.Follow cues from the individual to gage their interest level and determine how they are reacting to the photos.

 

 

It’s important to monitor your loved one’s reactions to the activity.   If the reaction is joyful or reminiscent, you are on the right track.  There may be times that the photos may somehow agitate him/her, then obviously you will want to redirect.  Like anything we do when dealing with dementia, what works one day, may not necessarily work the next.  One of our many challenges that keeps us on our toes!

Help for Alzheimer’s Givers of Care

It’s late at night, you feel like you need some support, you don’t feel like calling the 24/7 Alzheimer’s hotline, but you need some sort of boost in the arm as you try to figure out the best way to care for your loved one with memory issues.  this Facebook page to find help with lots of real time tips for people caring for someone with Dementia.

What’s nice about this is that you can post a question or challenge, and receive answers from those who are in the trenches, just like you: Everyday people, using technology to get through this challenge, together.

At genusConnect, we want to provide you with the best up to date resources to help you in this time of need. If you find other helpful websites such as the one above, please contact us and let us know so we can share it with others. We can care better, together.

Helpful Checklists for Givers of Care

Home Safety

The most important checklists you will need right away when caring for an aging loved one are listed below.  To print these checklists for use at home, you can access this article from your home computer by going the website.  https://www.giversofcare.org

This website is where all the articles from the Genus App are housed, so if reading from a computer is easier, you can have access from this site.

  • This checklist will help you with the many things to think about when looking for a long term facility for providing care for a loved one.
  • This checklist will help you choose an agency for In-Home-Care.
  • A medication checklist that you may want to use if you are not documenting meds in the Genus™ App.
  • This checklist will help you gather all the important financial and legal documents and information you need to have on hand when caring for a loved one.
  • A home-safety checklist is always a good idea to make sure your loved one is safe.
  • The VA provides some more useful checklists when caring for a Veteran on this site.
Disclaimer:  These links are being provided as a convenience and for informational purposes only; they do not constitute an endorsement or an approval by the genusConnect™ of any of the products, services or opinions of the corporation or organization or individual. genusConnect™ bears no responsibility for the accuracy, legality or content of the external site or for that of subsequent links. Contact the external site for answers to questions regarding its content.

Medical Safety for Receivers of Care

One of the most frustrating things to deal with when caring for an aging parent is the many health complications that arise as one ages.   Medical safety is of key concern.  Many family member also acting as caregivers have not had a great deal of experience dealing with doctors and various medical safety issues.   There are many questions that arise, making the whole caring experience a bit overwhelming without the proper information.

Using the Genus™ App

You can document your loved one’s medical conditions in the medical section of the app, list the doctor contact info for that condition along with pertinent medications.  To have all this information literally at your fingertips on your phone is invaluable.   All it takes is one person dedicated to entering the information, and once it is there, any approved member of your care community can easily access this important info as needed.   The end result is caring better, together.

Most important to medical safety is the value of tracking specific medical information inside the app.  Maybe you want to track the patient’s blood pressure and heart rate each day, along with their mood and mobility factor.  All of this is easy to do with the touch of a few keys using the Genus App.

Help in an Emergency

I can honestly say that if I had this app available to me when my dad was alive as we were caring for him with his Alzheimer’s condition, it would have been very helpful.   More than once I was called by the nursing home to say that my dad was being sent to the ER due to a fall or something similar.  Always in the middle of the night.  Then I would go to the ER, sleepy and bleary-eyed, being asked all kinds of questions by the doctors of which I had no answers for.   You see, I wasn’t the family member in charge of the medical information. That was my sister Jane.  She was the medical guru of the family and did a wonderful job keeping track of our parents’ medical conditions and appointments.  But that one person can’t always be available during an emergency.  Had I had the medical information on my phone, as we can do with the Genus App, it would have provided better emergency care for my dad and much less frustration for us both.  I am grateful to have this App to use with my mom, especially the emergency feature: the little red cross.   I have all the pertinent information at my fingertips!  What a relief!!

Another helpful website

For dealing with medical safety, go to https://healthfinder.gov/     Here you can type in the age of your patient and see what recommended health screenings are suggested as well as find out information on a variety of health issues that may be affecting our loved ones.   There is plethora of information here to help you navigate through these complex health issues.

Teaching Our Loved Ones to Ask for Help

rings5Most people want to be independent and do not want to be a burden on the family, hesitating to ask us for the help they need. When dealing with a family member who still has fairly strong cognitive abilities, we can only know where to provide help if we can teach our loved one to ask for help.  Of course we will see some obvious areas where help is needed, but in order to provide the best possible care, we need him/her to be open with us.

Teaching our Parents

When dealing with my father’s Alzheimer’s and my mother’s declining physical health, we had to convince Mom that it was better for us, if she could try to communicate her exact needs to us.   Once she realized that she was “helping” us by asking for what she needed,  then she could do it more easily.   We just needed to turn the tables for her realize that the best way to help us help her, was to be as specific as she could about what she needed.

When Mom saw some of the systems of organization (scheduling, medical, legal and communication) we had in place using the Genus™ App, she could see how knowing what help was needed ahead of time, could help us plan more efficiently and save us time in the end.   Thus, allowing a better quality of life for us all, not just Mom and Dad.  We had to convince Mom that by allowing her children to help with Dad’s Alzheimer’s, she was giving us a chance to give back to them.   She was enabling us to feel empowered about this frustrating and heartbreaking situation.  Again, it took some time for this change to take place, but with loving reminders from her children, she was able to more clearly communicate to us what exactly she needed help with.  This in turn, saved us valuable time as we tried to efficiently manage our personal lives along with caring for our parents.

Four Areas of Safety

But what about when our loved ones don’t even know what they need help with?   Whether it is because of a cognitive decline, or just the fact that our person of care is completely overwhelmed, he/she cannot communicate where exactly help is needed.   It is in this instance we need to remember that there are four areas of their safety to consider.

  • Physical
  • Emotional
  • Medical
  • Financial

It might seem overwhelming at first, but if we break it down into these 4 categories and tackle them one at a time, it is definitely doable.   In the Genus™ App, there are numerous articles, videos, and resources centered around these 4 areas of care:

Physical:  Think basic needs.  Food, shelter, clothing, water.  Also think about their mobility and pain factor, although this crosses over with medical.

Emotional:  Is our loved one getting the social interaction daily that is needed?  How about their mood?  Is your POC staying positive?  Do they need more social interaction?  You can track this using the Genus App.

Medical:  Do you have all the important documents and medical information filed in one place?  Are you tracking any specific vitals that need to be communicated to the doctor?  Do you have Medical POA?  If not, who does?

Legal and Financial:  Who is on the bank accounts with your loved one?  Who is helping him/her keep track of spending and finances?   What about plans for the future?

All of these areas are equally important, but some may take priority over others, depending on the situation and depending on timing.  One thing you can be sure of, things change constantly when caring for a loved one.  Keeping track of the changes is what can make the difference between a more positive experience and a very frustrating experience.  The best piece of advice I have here is:  Keep documenting, everything.  You won’t be sorry.  I found that by using the Genus™ App, I could more easily track the mounds of vital information.  Keeping me from feeling completely overwhelmed. Better yet, feeling as if we really have this situation under control.  That truly is the most comforting feeling of all when facing the challenge of caring for a loved one.  Knowing that this person we love so dearly is getting the best possible care we can provide.