Professional Care Managers

Professional care managers also known as Geriatric Care Managers, Elder Care Managers or Aging Care Managers, represent a growing trend to help full time, employed family caregivers provide care for loved ones. Care Managers are expert in assisting care givers, friends or family members find government paid and private resources to help with long term care decisions.

They are professionals, trained to evaluate and recommend care for the aged.  A care manager might be a nurse, social worker, psychologist or gerontologist who specializes in assessing the abilities and needs of the elderly.  Care managers are also becoming extremely popular as the care taker liaison between long distant family members and their aging elder loved ones.

Services offered will depend of the professional background of the care manager, but most are qualified to cover such items as conducting ongoing assessments to implement changes in care and be informed about what public and private services are available.  In addition the care manager will be familiar with the most qualified home care agencies in the area and most likely have worked with these companies before.

What should long distance care givers look for when choosing a home care agency?

Long Distance Care Givers Receive Help

Living in a different city or state, miles from aging parents can be very difficult.  Keeping in touch by telephone and making long trips to help parents on aging relatives with their needs can be time consuming and not nearly as effective ass being available full time in person.

A case in point, Mark Sessions spent two years juggling his restaurant business with multiple daily phone calls to his elderly parents, checking on their needs and answering their questions.  Family vacations were spent traveling the 500 miles to his parent's home to personally take care of home maintenance and provide health care visits to their doctor.  During his last visit, Mark noticed his father had difficulty walking and his mother was confused as to which medications she was to take and at what time.  This alarming change in his parent's condition concerned Mark that his parents care needs required more than frequent phone calls and vacation visits.  Running his business and handling his parent's long distance care was now becoming very challenging.

According to a report by the Alzheimer's Association of Los Angeles and Riverside, California, there are approximately 3.3 million long distance care givers in this country with an average distance of 480 miles from the people they care for.  The report also states that 15 million days are missed from work each year because of long distance care giving.  Seven million Americans provide 80% of the care to ailing family members and the number of long distance care givers will double over the next 15 years.

So what are long distance care givers to do?