A Guide to Foster Parenting - EVERYTHING BUT THE KIDS! By Mary Ann Goodearle, MS
If you enjoy her courses you will LOVE the book! "A Guide to Foster Parenting: Everything But The Kids!" is a journey you will travel alongside Mary as she writes about ways to make your vocation as a foster parent a long and rewarding experience.
"My primary goal and theme throughout the book is to help foster parents improve the climate in which they work and live. I want to help create better environments for fostering couples and singles in which to survive and continue helping foster children for a long time to come. Children need loving and dedicated foster parents. My hope is that you will stick around and be there for them for a long time." Mary Goodearle
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Steps
1
Step One
Help your parents map out their future if they haven't already considered it. List options for varying levels of care that range from independent living arrangements to assisted living to nursing homes. Talk about where they'd prefer to live once they can no longer live alone.
2
Step Two
Stay on top of the details. Create folders with your parents' pertinent medical, financial and legal information and contacts. See 289 Organize Medical Records.
3
Step Three
Meet with your parents and their financial adviser. If they don't have one, hire one. Do they have adequate insurance and income to cover their future needs?
4
Step Four
Review their trusts and/or wills with their lawyer. Are they current? Are they adequate? (See 244 Make a Will.) Ask your parents to sign durable powers of attorney (for health and finances) if they haven't already. This will allow you or someone else in the family to make life-and-death decisions for them if they become incapacitated. See 245 Execute a Power of Attorney.
5
Step Five
Keep their environment safe. Install safety bars in the bathrooms and ramps and handrails around the house if needed.
6
Step Six
Determine whether your parents need any help with bills or maintaining the house. Make regular checks of their accounts to make sure things are in order.
7
Step Seven
Look into services available for the elderly, ranging from Meals on Wheels to bus services, even medication reminder services.
1
Step One
Help your parents map out their future if they haven't already considered it. List options for varying levels of care that range from independent living arrangements to assisted living to nursing homes. Talk about where they'd prefer to live once they can no longer live alone.
2
Step Two
Stay on top of the details. Create folders with your parents' pertinent medical, financial and legal information and contacts. See 289 Organize Medical Records.
3
Step Three
Meet with your parents and their financial adviser. If they don't have one, hire one. Do they have adequate insurance and income to cover their future needs?
4
Step Four
Review their trusts and/or wills with their lawyer. Are they current? Are they adequate? (See 244 Make a Will.) Ask your parents to sign durable powers of attorney (for health and finances) if they haven't already. This will allow you or someone else in the family to make life-and-death decisions for them if they become incapacitated. See 245 Execute a Power of Attorney.
5
Step Five
Keep their environment safe. Install safety bars in the bathrooms and ramps and handrails around the house if needed.
6
Step Six
Determine whether your parents need any help with bills or maintaining the house. Make regular checks of their accounts to make sure things are in order.
7
Step Seven
Look into services available for the elderly, ranging from Meals on Wheels to bus services, even medication reminder services.
While the eldest daughter still tends to shoulder the heaviest burden of caring for aging parents, more and more adult children are pitching in, says Steven Stern, professor of economics at the University of Virginia.
"Families often behave as if there is only one caregiver," said Stern. "While there is usually one child who is the primary caregiver, other adult children are often willing to help out, within the limits of their capabilities. Often, the caregiver may not think to consult with her siblings and she misses out on opportunities to get help."But this has been changing.
Stern, and his co-author, Tenille Checkovitch, now a Yale-educated lawyer and formerly an undergraduate student at U.Va. majoring in economics, studied the arrangements families make to care for aging parents in their article, "Shared Care-giving Responsibility of Adult Siblings with Elderly Parents," published in the current issue of the Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 37, No. 3, which appeared on June 21.
"Families often behave as if there is only one caregiver," said Stern. "While there is usually one child who is the primary caregiver, other adult children are often willing to help out, within the limits of their capabilities. Often, the caregiver may not think to consult with her siblings and she misses out on opportunities to get help."But this has been changing.
Stern, and his co-author, Tenille Checkovitch, now a Yale-educated lawyer and formerly an undergraduate student at U.Va. majoring in economics, studied the arrangements families make to care for aging parents in their article, "Shared Care-giving Responsibility of Adult Siblings with Elderly Parents," published in the current issue of the Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 37, No. 3, which appeared on June 21.
Aging Parents and Elder Care
– A guide to caring for your elderly loved one –
Caring for an aging parent, elderly spouse, domestic partner or close friend presents tough challenges – especially when a crisis hits and the responsibilities of elder care descend upon you suddenly. Perhaps your aging mother has fallen, is hospitalized with a broken hip and needs to go to a rehab facility.
Caregiving can also begin as a result of a series of unsettling mishaps and warning signs that indicate a need for long term care. Perhaps your elderly spouse has wandered off and gotten lost several times. Or a long-time friend has lost a lot of weight and rarely leaves home.
You may be the only person to step in and become the caregiver, or you may be the linchpin of a large network of family members and friends willing to help. Whatever the situation, you are not sure of the next step, or even the first step.
– A guide to caring for your elderly loved one –
Caring for an aging parent, elderly spouse, domestic partner or close friend presents tough challenges – especially when a crisis hits and the responsibilities of elder care descend upon you suddenly. Perhaps your aging mother has fallen, is hospitalized with a broken hip and needs to go to a rehab facility.
Caregiving can also begin as a result of a series of unsettling mishaps and warning signs that indicate a need for long term care. Perhaps your elderly spouse has wandered off and gotten lost several times. Or a long-time friend has lost a lot of weight and rarely leaves home.
You may be the only person to step in and become the caregiver, or you may be the linchpin of a large network of family members and friends willing to help. Whatever the situation, you are not sure of the next step, or even the first step.
We hear so much about caring for aging parents these days that at times it feels that children are in a no win situation. Care-giving involves making difficult decisions which should be handled with as much thought and discussion as possible. Thanks to Daniel Taylor, a 20 year veteran of the financial services industry, an attorney, and president of his own North Carolina-based advisory firm, for showing us an intelligent way in dealing with the emotional, practical, and financial challenges of caring for aging parents. Taylor has put together an excellent guide book, The Parent Care Conversation: Six Strategies for Transforming the Emotional and Financial Future of Your Aging Parents where he presents a system that he developed that grew out of his own experiences in dealing with his father's care.
Long -term care for aging parents is a sensitive, often difficult, but ultimately inevitable issue with which all of us will have to cope sooner or later. The Parent Care Conversation offers a step-by-step approach for families to follow that will enable them to develop workable plans of action. By first addressing the emotional aspects of long-term care that take into account the parents’ feelings and wishes, then integrating the practical and financial components, this book will open the door for a critical exchange of information and honest discussion among adult children and their aging parents that has long been the major roadblock to successful elder care. Filled with factual information, useful tips, real-life stories, and practical exercises, The Parent Care Conversation provides a proactive and collaborative solution to the long-term care issues that eventually everyone must face.
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