Elder Care and Family Caregiving Consultant
As an elder care consultant, Pamela D Wilson meets virtually or by telephone with families, caregivers, and persons managing or planning for their care.
Pamela’s experience includes owning and managing an in-home care agency and a professional care management fiduciary agency. In addition, she has helped clients in the roles of care manager, legal guardian for the elderly and disabled, medical and financial power of attorney, personal representative of the estate, and trustee. This unique experience makes Pamela exceptionally qualified to help individuals and families worldwide.
Navigating and Planning for the Unexpected Can Be Challenging
Whether you are new to caregiving or have been involved for years caring for yourself or family members, take steps to gain the knowledge you need to navigate family, health, financial, and legal issues. If you are an aging adult looking to make a well-thought-out plan, Pamela walks you through the steps necessary to ensure you receive the care you need.
Contact Pamela today to schedule a 1:1 telephone or virtual appointment by completing the form below.
Questions? Below this form, you’ll find a list of topics Pamela can discuss and reasons planning for care needs, understanding the financial and legal aspects of care, and advocating for care are critical for yourself or a loved one.
Request a Consultation With Pamela D Wilson
Reasons Individuals and Families Delay Seeking Information and Support
There are many reasons individuals and families wait to seek information or plan. These include:
- Avoiding worry about the future and things that may or may not happen with age. As a result, reacting to crises becomes normal behavior.
- Being in denial about the consequences or seriousness of a current situation. As a result, health conditions and situations can go beyond the point of no return. Options previously available are no longer available.
- Feeling too emotionally overwhelmed to confront choices and make difficult decisions. As a result, family disagreements, neglect, financial, legal, and health problems increase in scope and severity.
- Lacking awareness and experience with unexpected events that can happen. As a result, a lack of knowledge results in more mistakes, frustrations, and problems.
Caregiving Isn’t a One-Size-Fits-All Experience
Families face different needs and challenges. Cultural beliefs, attitudes toward preventative health, experiences with healthcare providers, and health diagnoses result in complex situations that require in-depth knowledge and experience. Below are topics that Pamela frequently discusses during a consultation:
- Evaluate current care situations to identify priorities
- Talk to loved ones about care needs—those who refuse help, exhibit negative tendencies or apathy
- Discuss health concerns to develop proactive strategies
- Navigate care with the healthcare system
- Learn to hire and manage caregivers from in-home care agencies
- Coordinate relationships with multiple care providers
- Manage care needs to minimize or maintain advancing concerns
- Consider when it’s the right time to move to a care community: independent, assisted living or memory care, or a nursing home
- Evaluate memory loss concerns and plan for care
- Advocate for care when providers disagree, fail to follow through, or other concerns exist
- Learn about health insurance, long-term care insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid planning
- Financially planning and budgeting for care needs
- Legally plan for care needs (power of attorney, guardianship, living wills, wills, or trusts)
- Understand the differences between a DNR (do not resuscitate), MOST form and a living will
- Initiate end-of-life care discussions and palliative care, and request hospice care referrals
- Identify beneficial community support services
- Navigate family relationships: spousal caregiving, adult child caregiving, elderly caregivers caring for the elderly
- Balance the challenges of giving up your life or a job to care for aging parents or a spouse
- Reasons women need to be more proactive in planning for care in later life
- Recognize signs that loved ones will need more care
- Estimate care costs for a sick spouse faced with a divorce settlement
- Accept cultural differences or religious beliefs about the duty to care for aging parents
- Report abusive care situations, work with Adult Protective Services, and identify self-neglect within the family or with caregivers
There’s No Substitute for Knowledge
Managing the day-to-day needs of aging parents can be easy until an unexpected change or health event occurs, and mom or dad needs more care. Suddenly, caregivers may be faced with providing medical-type care and navigating the health care system.
Time pressures increase as more care is needed. Adult children working full time, raising their own families, going to school, and working to balance life may feel overwhelmed trying to do it all. Caregivers feel pressured or guilty for doing their best, which may never seem enough.
Siblings may refuse or be unable to help care for aging parents. Aging parent’s health conditions may continue to worsen. When life goes off course, and you’re not sure what to do or how to plan for what’s next, gaining knowledge is essential.
How to Plan for the Future if You Have No Family
Adults aging without the support of a partner, spouse, or nearby family members—called solo-agers—have a greater need to make future plans for care and the costs of care. Learn the details important to making a plan by consulting with Pamela.
Wilson discusses identifying family members as future decision-makers for medical care and financial needs. This includes creating guardrails and a plan for oversight if family members lack experience or there are concerns about family disagreements.
Pamela’s experience as a court-appointed guardian, a medical and financial power of attorney, the personal representative of the estate, and a trustee encompasses all of the aspects that adult children, caregivers, and aging adults experience throughout the care journey.
Reduce Worry and Stress
As an eldercare consultant, Pamela experienced the loss of both parents, a brother, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and dear friends, and managed care for elderly clients at the end of their lives.
This website’s articles, videos, and programs offer compassionate and empathetic support for complex and uncomfortable topics faced by caregivers and individuals with health concerns.
Self-Care and Self-Management Responsibilities
Pamela emphasizes the necessity of becoming educated about health and learning the questions to ask healthcare providers to make informed and better decisions.
Healthcare providers and policymakers focus on shifting care responsibilities to individuals for self-management of health issues. Consumers can no longer take their health or the responsibility to manage health diagnoses for granted.
Early conversations about care and geriatric care planning ensure that adults caring for themselves and individuals needing care can make the best choices.
Education about options can help balance the needs of elderly parents and caregivers. Especially in cultures where wide differences exist between care for elderly parents and self-care for the caregiver. Self-care is essential to preserve the caregiver’s ability to provide ongoing care for aging parents.
Navigating Cultural Differences in Caregiving
While family relationships can be challenging due to early parent-child relationships, initiating care conversations can clarify participation by parents and adult children’s responsibilities and commitments to provide care.
Caregiving relationships differ by culture, religion, and the behaviors that aging parents model for children about care responsibilities. Family and aging parent consultations can open the door for conversations about caregiving expectations and responsibilities.
Saying no to caregiving responsibilities can be unacceptable because a “no” may mean family rejection and abandonment. Preserving family harmony may be a belief that extends beyond self-sacrifice made by an adult child caregiver—who is usually female.
In some cultures, caregivers feel they must internalize problems and suffer adversity.
Feelings of guilt can motivate adult children. Rather than being selfish about their needs, they focus on an aging parent’s needs.
These beliefs are more relevant in Asian, Hispanic, and African cultures—even in the United States. These caregivers view the act of caregiving as something one does without question.
The difference between cultures that place the care of parents over their own well-being—versus cultures that support independence and self-responsibility—may be that parents modeled the act of caregiving for their children. Many European and American caregivers had few or no direct examples of caregiving by aging parents.
Caregivers who believe in independence and self-responsibility for care may be more interested in establishing care boundaries or equitable care situations with aging parents. These caregiving adults may work with an elder care consultant to make plans so that caregiving responsibilities are not pushed down to adult children or future generations without some type of plan to support care costs.
When parents do not model caregiving behaviors for children, the foundation to view caregiving as an expected or normal life responsibility may be missing. In American and European cultures, personal responsibility versus cultural beliefs has a greater influence on the duty to care for aging parents, but to different degrees. In all situations, siblings may have very different opinions and reactions about the responsibility to care for aging parents.
Caregivers Who Fail to Care For Themselves Fail to Care for Aging Parents
The idea of supporting aging parents and other family members without question raises the concern of harm to the emotional and physical health of the caregiver, which is well-researched and documented worldwide. Regardless of cultural beliefs about keeping caregiving responsibilities within the family, seeking outside support or finding volunteer or paid caregivers can give family caregivers a break and time to care for themselves.
Time away from caregiving can allow adult children time to spend with spouses and children while maintaining careers to support their families and the care of aging parents financially.
Caring for aging parents may no longer be possible when the caregiver breaks down in any aspect of life.
The dedicated caregiver may become the person who needs care. Rather than looking at seeking help as a negative, seeking support and help for caregivers is a way to provide ongoing and compassionate care for aging parents.
If you feel stuck in your family about caregiving responsibilities, take steps to find support to preserve your health and well-being.
Find More Answers to Questions Caregivers Ask on The Caring Generation Podcasts
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