Why You Should Seek Help from an Aging Life Care Professional

Make the best care choices with the help of Hired Hands Homecare and an aging life care professional.

We all desire the best for our loved ones – it’s only natural. Yet in some cases when families are involved in an older person’s care, feelings about what is best may clash. This can cause family members to fight with each other as opposed to working together. This is when it’s often a good idea to enlist the help of an outside person like a geriatric care manager (GCM), one who realizes what seniors need for long-term care and how to accomplish getting this care.

Geriatric care managers (or aging life care professionals, which is the more modern term) have the skills needed to guide families in identifying what kind of care an older loved one requires and how to most efficiently coordinate long-term care. They can also function as mediators when family members are at odds when attempting to plan care for their loved one.

Consider a geriatric care manager as a “professional family member,” usually a nurse or social worker, with expertise in all of the available resources to assist older individuals with a variety of needs and challenges. Just a few of the countless ways they can provide help include:

• Helping families work through difficult discussions and problems
• Addressing emotional concerns
• Collaborating with other care experts, such as the older adult’s medical team
• Making visits to the home to evaluate needs and propose appropriate services
• Developing both short-term and long-term care plans and goals
• Offering necessary relief to overloaded family caregivers

Be sure to get the answers to these questions from potential aging life care professionals:

• Do you have a license?
• How much experience do you have as an aging life care professional?
• What will happen if I have an emergency after-hours?
• Are there references I can speak with?
• Does your agency also help with home care services?

Geriatric Care Managers and Home Care

One of the benefits of using a geriatric care manager to help coordinate care is that GCMs are professionals who are trained to work with many different types of people and organizations. A GCM can help coordinate medical care, work with attorneys and coordinate with your chosen in-home care agency. Home care agencies, like Hired Hands Homecare, work seamlessly with geriatric care managers to help reduce family stress and improve quality of life in the home.

If your loved one lives in Napa or the surrounding area, the professionals at Hired Hands Homecare would be happy to discuss with you how best to go about coordinating care. Call us at 866-940-4343 to learn more about home care assistance Napa and the surrounding areas trust most. To learn more about all of the areas that we serve in California, please visit our service area page.