There’s No Place Like Home

June 11, 2009

Filed under: Elder Law
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The decision to place a loved one in a nursing home (or the decision to leave your own home and move to a nursing facility, if you are making the decision yourself) can be one of the most difficult and harrowing decisions we ever make.  Stories about disreputable facilities where seniors are neglected or abused are all too common, and even if months of searching lead to the discovery of “the perfect” care facility—the shining grain of wheat among the chaff—it’s normal to be apprehensive about exchanging the comfort and independence of home for the unknown in the hands of strangers on the nursing staff.  This feeling is magnified if the senior being moved is essentially alone, with the next generation of friends and family scattered across the country.

To ease the transition, and to assure all involved that grandma will be well cared for, many families are opting to hire a Geriatric Care Manager.  Traditionally (although Geriatric Care Management is an emerging field, so the term must be used lightly) GCMs have been a resource for seniors and their families; someone on the inside who knows the system and can help navigate, finding the best care and services for each individual situation.  But some families are now asking the GCM to continue advising the family even after grandma has settled into the nursing home, to ensure that their loved one continues to receive the best care possible. At the very least the GCM may recommend hiring a professional caregiver to check in with grandma at the nursing home daily or weekly, to observe the quality of care she is receiving and keep family members informed.

If you are interested in learning more, or if you’d like to find a Geriatric Care Manager in your area, go to the National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers online. And if you are someone who doesn’t need a GCM quite yet, but would like your family to have help navigating the confusing field of nursing care when the time comes, call your attorney and ask to include a mention of it in your estate planning documents or other instructions.  Also, let your loved ones know of this option and your desire to use it.

Knowing you are not alone, and having help from someone on the inside, can bring a world of comfort to you and your family.

The Best Gift for Aging Parents is… A Laptop?

June 8, 2009

Filed under: Current Events,Elder Law
Tags: , , , , ,

Americans love our technology; cell phone, laptop, wi-fi, Kindle, iPod—all of these things keep us socially connected, culturally informed, and satisfy our growing need for instant gratification. But there is an assumption that this technological savvy and appreciation stops once you reach a certain age.  We expect teens, twenty and thirty-somethings, and baby-boomers to be “plugged in”, but assume that Facebook and Wikipedia won’t be of interest to the elderly.

Turns out, we couldn’t be more wrong.

Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times writes that “among older people who went online last year, the number visiting social networks grew almost twice as fast as the overall rate of Internet use among that group.” For home-bound or wheelchair-bound seniors the internet and social networking sites can be a sanity-saver, keeping them from loneliness and isolation.

This growing trend is being helped along by social networking sites such as MyWay Village, designed specifically for seniors, their friends and families. These online senior networking groups allow members of the physically challenged elderly population to keep in touch with distant family members, meet people from their own cohort all over the country, and reconnect with old friends and co-workers—all at their own pace.  

These are the same things we all love about the social networking sites, young or old.  It turns out our aging parents aren’t so different from our teenage kids, or even from ourselves. If you think that your parents (or even you, yourself) are too old to catch on to the latest internet trend, reconsider. Everyone needs a community, even if that community is out in cyber-space.

Preserving Your Grandparents’ Story

April 1, 2009

Filed under: Estate Planning,General Items
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An estate planner’s office can feel a lot like it’s all about the logistics of death: who gets what and how, who gets to make decisions, where things are kept, etc. But at our office, we know that every estate plan is also about a personal or a family story, and we encourage our clients to include those stories with the other things they leave behind. Elderly people have so much life experience and wisdom to share (even if they don’t always consider it wisdom themselves), and most children or grandchildren—although they may not know how to ask—want to hear those stories.

Now there’s a book that helps teach you how to ask, and with the stories it contains helps the elderly learn how to share. It also teaches us just how valuable the wisdom of the elderly is, and how fun it can be to grow old gracefully. The book is How to Live: A Search for Wisdom from Old People (While They Are Still on This Earth) by Henry Alford. In it, Alford tells the story of his own search for wisdom and the interviews he conducted trying to find it; along the way he relates the sometimes funny, sometimes touching, but always enlightening stories of the elderly people he interviewed. Alford’s book is entertaining, but a reading of it will also teach you the tools you need to interview the elderly people in your own life.

When you sit down to create your estate plan, think not only about how to pass on your assets, but also how to pass on your unique family stories and wisdom. After all, the silver may go back to your great-great grandmother, but the story behind it is what makes it such a valuable family heirloom.