good morning and welcome to what's going on my name is dolores b doll and i'm very thrilled to greet i co host here marriage moment who is the senior helper a company on the north shore but in fact render services in various community turns may serve all of northeastern mass all of north eastern mass and he is here today to talk to us about ever increasing important topic which is the fact that where more of us are getting older even though we don't look at you know i know it's hot and that's why i'm mentioning it because i knew you know that unless i mentioned it and we have all sorts of difficulties not only figuring out what we're going to do about our own personal care but our loved ones are members of our families and trying to have families who cannot really move in to take care of our loved ones or give up their jobs or move from one state to another one city to another what kinds of options exist in fact to bring people and it's a it's a profound issue for families you know how do we how do we care appropriately for an elderly loved one oftentimes the family may no longer live in the community it's it creates great stress great anxiety guilt fill in the blank you know we oftentimes see families dealing with the most fundamental issues in trying to deal with an elderly loved one in agencies such as mine home carey can see you know our objective is quite simply we want to provide the support the necessary support to keep an elder living safely and independently in his or her own home and that's what it is we do every day by providing again a home care company such as ourselves we provide skilled aides certified nursing assistants and certified home health aides to go into to another's home and from anywhere from one hour to twenty four hours a day we provide living care really the and the needs of the elders are valving just as we as a as a general population are evolving in terms of understanding who the elderly are and who we're becoming help us get a scope of the picture by the numbers that we had discussed before we came up with and they are quite staggering numbers are phenomenal you know so if we're going to break up elderly really into two groups sixty five and older and then really what what we call the old us old which is anybody greater than eighty five and the way to understand that difference of if you know somebody or somebody or have a loved one who's eighty seven years old the physical cognitive  and emotional needs of an individual are vastly different from somebody who's sixty five years old seventy years old so so we you know we try to understand that there are those significant differences but but just looking at what we consider the elderly sixty five and older two thousand and ten forty point two million americans were sixty five and older two thousand and twenty it's projected to be fifty four point eight million twenty thirty right and the baby boomers are are that are that junk and the baby boom the first baby boomer turned sixty five two years ago and watching that snake digest and that that that animal go through the system that day you know most families aren't prepared most elders or most baby boomers who are fifty eight today haven't thought you know how long am i going to little here's some interesting interesting ideas first off seniors cidade are living a day a decade longer than their parents right now one at of eight people twelve point six percent of americans are sixty five and older somebody who sixty five today has an expected can it can expect to have an average life expectancy of additional nineteen years little more for women a little less for men but but where we are we're looking at people on average living into their mid eighty's every five ten years that that we add on that number just gets larger so so when we think about the oldest old are we prepared financially psychologically as a society structurally to to assist the you know these these folks these are our enormous enormous challenges for us this is for us as a society and then most importantly and this is where i am every day dealing with the families let me give you some interesting about family caregiving ok forty four point four million americans today twenty one percent of the adult population act as caregivers for an elderly loved one right now forty four million people a third of those people are caring for two or more people eighty three percent of caregivers are related to their care recipients mom dad and uncle the average caregivers ages forty six  so when when my phone rings saying i need some help with with mom ninety percent of the time it's the oldest daughter calling she's the primary caregiver she's the one who's looking out for  where her parents are and where parents are going to be in three years five years ten years i'm sorry fifty nine in this is these are some real societal issues them about to touch upon fifty nine percent of the caregivers fifty nine percent of the forty four millions is somewhere around thirty million is around number thirty million of those of those caregivers are currently employed most work full time and report missing work on a regular basis due to the health needs of an elderly loved one that has significant issues i'm a business owner you know not only am i in the elderly care business but i'm a business owner so i see it on that side too what's the productivity and how that's being impacted fifty four percent of working caregiver say they're unprepared for the schedule juggling that they're being asked to do and and here is one that is just phenomenal you know  many hours of care they're providing on average or beyond what it is they're doing for their family and for their job twenty hours a week think of the burnout factor involved with just being the adult child of somebody that you're providing care for i'm going to compound the issue a little bit many of these folks live out of town so they pick up the phone and they call home care companies such as myself were what is called the private duty home care company and as i said we provide aides to go into the home to provide the services so that that elder can continue living safely an infinitely we do light housekeeping will run a vacuum will run errands will cook will clean we will  make sure that the home is safe and sanitary if there are tripping hazards if there are loose rugs cords will make sure that the home is safe and properly is properly up fit for an elder a high turnout of course because i can think of an instance in which this service has been and the elderly person who is receiving the service doesn't want anybody in her home i'll do my laundry you don't know where i want my things and finally the service  you know refused to come back because there was no way despite all the kindness in heaven this person not a person could not be appeased and the husband took  the son who was the one who brought in the service to help here what what does the family do in a situation like that well i get where you're describing is i had tell you it's just common you know  look the response is first up but time my phone rings that elder that family is already emitting a degree of vulnerability if they have to reach out to a third party such as myself they're saying i'm situation i can't handle myself right huge issue psychological issue so so then we come in and i tried it set realistic expectations and what i always tell the family is you got to give it two weeks you know and i say to the other you've got to give it two weeks and what we find is that the vast majority in here i mean ninety five ninety seven percent of the time at the end of two weeks the elder has a new best friend which is how it works ok and i don't care how resistant that individual was at the front end and they are resistant at the end of two weeks it's usually you usually get to the happy place so to speak there's some instances where quite frankly the care is just going to be rejected and denied and that's what it is you're articulating and you know from from my perspective from my employees perspective from the caregivers perspective these are pros so they're they're trained they've seen it all they all have a lot of experience and i'll go into that in one moment but so they're trying to let it roll off their back so you know we have elders who are have been incredibly abusive you know i've heard racial epithets come out of me come out of my clients mouths that back when i had hair would curl my hair so i can i tell you but but no in but in all seriousness the aids get it these are pros they understand that and oftentimes they're dealing with somebody who has some level of cognitive impairment that's what i was going to say if you're specializing in people whose very condition is known for becoming very aberrant i mean that it's just unusual some people become very aggressive others are just as sweet as can be you know but we saw this change in my grandmother ok what she was just the most reliably person but suddenly she's doing the strangest thing these and that you know and saying and the strangest thing is you know for first off cognitive impairment is not a normal know it could be it certainly you know but but it's the i guess my response is yes and you know so it can manifest itself in any number of ways in alzheimer's which is of course the most  well known of the cognitive impairments i i just have a thing here i can think of it's a horrible disease it's a horrible disease and so the response is if you're confronted with something that's she has she's developed a program for us at senior helpers that we call the gems program basically we've created six different stews in the allen index we've created six different stages of  aware of the progression of the disease basically rubies pearls diamonds basically on the concept that everybody's precious so it's about what a quote from t it's about focusing on what those effective can do respecting what they're what they're under able to do and providing the right support for success so it's meeting somebody where they are and he has the disease progress is the able to do different things so so we have trained our caregivers to recognize if if the if the client with whom you're working has these capabilities then you respond to here she this way look i'm i'm so far from clinical professional i came in tell you hey i'm a nice guy you don't want me doing it then that's of so so when i went through the training you know little simple things that were very illuminating for me i didn't recognize that the sphere of vision diminished as the disease progresses ok so having a caregiver who understands where to stand so that somebody can be seen and seen as not threatening that's it's i mean how fundamental is that how to approach somebody in touch somebody had to guide somebody so we have a set of programs a set of services a set of activities uniting built specifically on people's abilities not their disabilities and the reality is that it's a progressive disease these unfortunately all are progressive diseases and over time somebody who was a diamond today is going to transition into a ruby in six months or a year and that means that that their abilities have changed in some would say diminished i would say changed so our caregivers are trained to provide support services based upon what it is they can do not what it is they can do a wonderful it's a wonderful approach and i hate to interrupt you but there's so much material please and information that i'm sure people want to have including myself and time unfortunately is limited so you're going to have to come back well would be my honor ok in the meantime how does a family begin how do we what can you call you up what do you then do who pays for this service sure there a these issues i would what i absolutely touch on why can't they get information i know one source is of course our senior center has the material absolutely about you and your program but not everybody has been down there are ask or looked around for so what about online well so so the first thing i would say is that please use me as a resource and to your viewers please use me as a resource feel free to give me a call on the give i'm assuming that our numbers been flashed up i'm going to give it a given now i'll give it again in a few moments ok our office is seven eight one five six nine six seven zero zero and just call up ask for myself ask for my partner mark friedman and i'll take all the time that you need just walk you through the process because i got to tell you it's a daunting process our website is senior helpers dot com there's a tremendous amount of information on the website and i'm happy you stuff in the mail whatever's whatever is helpful but i want to answer your question very specifically about about how to families approach it and i'm going to tell you what my least favorite phone call is ok and it's a phone call who's looking for my services i hate the phone call that says moms being released from rehab tomorrow morrow and i need somebody to care for i had to discharge meeting and the social worker the nurse said that my mom needs twenty exactly it's shift work it's somebody whose needs is very significant where what we do do live in and and where i love living care cases i think that living is far and away the most cost effective the highest level of care  run we have excellent what we have excellent care givers but i was so we live in caregivers which we do i'm happy to talk to families about that those dissensions but going back to my point was that when i get the call that says moms being released tomorrow they need to get care in place and look they're they're lucky that they called me because they they picked up the phone and called a reputable agency because in massachusetts home care is not a licensed a regulated industry right which means that anybody can hang up their shingle and say hi i'm a home care company the closest thing that we have in massachusetts to licensure is an accreditation program through the massachusetts home care alliance and the home accredited agencies in massachusetts and we did it almost upon opening our doors it didn't exist when we did it otherwise we would have and the reason is is that it's all about standards and it's all about protecting the consumer so so the best thing that i could suggest that your that your viewers do is long before they have the need do the research do the research you know talk to their friends talk to home care companies talk to assisted living facilities get a sense about what's coming three years five years down the road of course most importantly have a conversation with your parents or if you're a parent have a child a conversation with your adult children we talked prior to coming on on air about assets these are not inexpensive services a private duty home care company such as myself averages about twenty five dollars an hour some are more expensive some are less expensive that's the same as just someone coming in to seriousness you know if you think about what the real financial implications of the service are if somebody is needs twenty four hour care twenty four seven care you're looking at almost a quarter of a million dollars a year that's a significant significant expense i get that as a business owner i get that as the son of elder of an elder i get that assisted living facilities you know range anywhere from four to six thousand dollars a month on average and again depends on the quality it depends where it depends what what package of services you purchased now for us we find that home care is oftentimes the least expensive option and and for many people the best option because they want to stay at home so our average client is twenty one hours a week you know we can go in three days a week for you know what we'll do we'll create whatever schedule the elder wants but but on average i think twenty one hours a week and and so when you do the math it's certainly going to be a less expensive oftentimes more cost effective means of care but going back to the point that i want to make a second ago excuse me to your planning think about your family's assets this is not a purchase of luxury this is not a purchase of of the wealthy this is a purchase of necessity meaning that is being released on tuesday and you have to go back to work on wednesday who's going to watch mom it's a big big issue the families that plan have you know spoken to an elder law attorney something i would strongly suggest be informed what was the sims the educated consumers your best consumer and and i completely agree with that here you're talking about your most valuable asset your most valuable possession in the world your elder parent and oftentimes i find people doing more research into the refrigerator their buying or their new t v than who's going to be walking into the door to care for mom for the next eight hours call denial i think very possibly you know very real it's so overwhelming so yes but you forewarning is absolutely and writing and if any of the viewers you know want to place to start again just pick up the phone give me a call seventy one five six nine six seven zero zero and i can help them navigate what is a daunting field of elder care it's things you've never even comprehended and there are things that you've never thought about those are the things they're going to trip who you're going to bring into your house because just as i said if you're doing more research into a refrigerator then who's going to be in your household loan with your mom for the next eight hours you know i tell you what our hiring practices are and every agency is different ok you know we're to go out of our way first off as an accredited agency all of our caregivers our employees we never use subcontractors so before i hire him before i'm going to put him on my payroll i'm going to know who these people are so in massachusetts we are required to do a corey check which of course we do which is what we say it's a state criminal record and you get seven years of massachusetts only information be very honest with you it's only only helpful to  point i certainly wouldn't depend upon it and if there's an agency would that you speak with that says all we do is a cori check i would be wary because you're not going to get that much information and again this is you know this is a bias of mine this is how i run my business everybody does things differently but we do of course we do the corey were mandated to and we're happy to in a pro and comply we also do a fifty state criminal background check a fifty state sexual offender registry check a nurse's aide registry check an office of inspector general check a d m v check we check everybody's driving records because our aides regularly drive our clients around the community part of the service that we offer and so interesting about inquiring about other states because for heaven's sakes i mean you know they may have a clean record in massachusetts and just moved here two months ago but obviously while in arizona while one hundred percent correct you have no merit unfortunately our time is running i know you're going to have to come back because there's so much this lore some has so interesting and really is so useful so i'd like to make one last favorite dear aunt who passed away far far too young she was sixty one and she and when when that occurred at her funeral her husband was eulogizing her and basically spent about half the time talking about the caregiver that brought love and peace and respect to judy's final three months really these caregivers are remarkable people their engines on earth the impact that we have on people's lives are real  valued the elders that you care about and protect them today by setting up for them what's moral can be please feel free to reach out to me any questions that i can that any information i can give i'd be happy note until next time on what's going on