Long-term planning is crucial to caregiving

The family is headed toward a crisis in caring for the elderly. It will impact all of us, so if you have aging parents, don’t think you can just close your eyes and hope for the best. You are likely setting yourself up for a world of hurt.

All too often, the adult children of aging parents are blind-sided when presented with the realities of taking care of parents in need. This is usually precipitated by some sort of health crisis. In my own business, I see it time and time again. What follows is pure chaos, anxiety and hard feelings. There is no way to stop the inevitable, because aging and declining health are part of living, so what can you do?

“It is critical that families begin the conversation now to create a long-term care plan. Do not wait for it to become an immediate crisis,” says Annalee Kruger, President of Care Right, a Florida-based expert in the area.

The crisis in caregiving has grown exponentially in this country. So much so that Kruger and others like her have been able to establish thriving businesses by providing solutions for families caught up in a care crisis. Her line of work ranges from providing solutions in caring for aging loved ones to acting as a third-party facilitator in family meetings. She coaches family caregivers (who may be dealing with dementia or are just plain burnt out), but her most satisfying work is developing a plan for the future in order to avoid most of the pitfalls ahead.

Unfortunately, crisis management is still a large part of her business. In order to deal with that event, she first needs to understand the actual care needs of your family member going forward. In today’s economy, there are innumerable options and choices to make ranging from private sector solutions (if you have the money) to public options. In any given state, there are a myriad of organizations that provide help and assistance to a family in need.

Just knowing the lay of the land in this area requires a great deal of expertise, while matching your family care giving needs with resources available can be a full-time job. Chief among them may be the financial implications of your choices.

If your family is like mine, everyone will have a different opinion of what direction to take and why. Some members of the family may already be at odds from past disagreements. In the best of cases, developing an aging plan that all can agree upon usually requires an outside mediator. As I mentioned in last week’s column, many family members today live far apart, and just communicating with a California brother or sister in Maine on an on-going basis is sometimes impossible without help.

As you might imagine, all of the above would be easier on all of us if we didn’t wait for an immediate crisis, like Dad falling on his head while cleaning the roof gutters, or Mom’s fall in the garage. Logic dictates that we do not wait for an immediate crisis. Your first step is a family meeting.

Krueger suggests a serious meeting should be arranged with the family where three questions are agreed upon: “If mom or dad becomes incapacitated, where will they live? Who will take care of mom or dad? And if they need custodial care, how will the family pay for this care?”

“The answers will form the basis for a long-term care plan,” Kruger explains. “If family members disagree regarding the answers, compromise must be made. The entire family must come to a consensus that everyone can live with or risk the disintegration of the family.”

As I wrote last week, it is a serious issue that is only going to get worse in the future as more elderly 80-plus family members need help and less and less caregivers (45-64 years old) are around to provide it. Nearly 10 million caregivers are now over 50 years of age. That number is going to explode upward in the next decade. Over 86% of these caregivers saw a tremendous impact on their lifestyle. Sixty-four percent of them are funding their parent in some way; accounting for 33% of their monthly budget, according to AARP.

If those statistics don’t convince you then nothing will. My advice: call that family meeting as soon as possible before it is too late and get some help.