Family and Caregiver Services with Dan White
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Dan White at Evergreen Washelli says that all senior caregivers must go through the last stage, which is the grief and loss of our loved one. What happens when a loved one passes, for you? How do you adjust?
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*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
The following podcast is a special presentation of answers for elders featuring evergreen wash shelley, and welcome to answers for elders radio everyone. We are here with our experts spotlight of the month, Mr Dan White from evergreenwash shelley, and it’s during caregiver month, is kind of an interesting time, especially because a lot of us, especially that are caring for aging loved ones, obviously we all go through the last stage, which is the grief and loss of our loved one. And one of the things that we don’t really may not think about, and of course, Dan, you’re here to just kind of talk about this today, is you know what happens when a loved one passes for you and how do you adjust? And I think one of the things that’s so great about evergreenwash Shelley, which Dan is here. Welcome to the program well, thank you. Thanks for inviting me. You know, Dan, I’m so impressed. I had no idea that evergreenwash shelley does so many great things for family caregivers and and so talking a little bit about you guys actually have a booklet that you provide to families and caregivers tell me a little bit about the booklet. Well, the the book itself is actually called answers to your questions, MMM, and it’s really designed to be a few own our cremation guide, okay, and help people walk through all the things that need to be taken care of. HMM. And the reason for that is there there’s so many decisions and these decisions. You and I both know that people don’t like to talk about dying and death, and so it’s good to talk about those things. Why you’re healthy and be able to do that. Now do you find this is just a curiosity point on my point. I know for my mom, she didn’t want to talk about death and dying. What I’m noticing, though, is that younger senior, that sixty five, seventy five year old, they actually are starting to take those things into their own hands. Are you seeing more of that? Yes, we are, actually we are, and what I’m seeing is that they are the generation that have recently lost their parents, right S or s so they’ve actually had to go through that, do everything and make those arrangements. MMM. But now they’re looking to their kids and they don’t want their kids to have to worry about taking care of them, you know, and that’s what we see so often, is now the you know, the older baby boomer that you know, that senior that you know is just either they’ve just turned sixty five and they’re they’re saying, you know, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? I just went through it with my parents. I’m going to make sure number one, I have a long term care policy. I preplanned my funeral expenses because I just went through it, I know how expensive it is. I want to make sure that everything’s lined up. So that’s really interesting that you’re seeing kind of an upswing with that in your industry as well. We actually are. It’s very interesting. In the past we didn’t not as much unless we happen to contact them, but we have a lot of people who are now contacting us because whenever you go to a funeral, and as we all get older and now you see other friends who have passed right and in fact I’m going to a funeral service on the seventeen for a very dear friend of my wife that she knew for seventeen years and she just passed on her fifty eight birthday at home. My God. So you never know. No but it does bring to light things that you want to get your own house in order. It really does, and when you think about you know there’s so many decisions to make. You’re absolutely right. I remember when I lost my mom and I didn’t really know what she wanted and I remember finally I got it out of her. Yeah, she had a couple of Martini’s first thought, but we did is good. You know, we went out to dinner and we got a chance to talk about it and and I was kind of surprised at some of the things that she told me because I didn’t know that she preferred to be cremated over buried. I would have just assumed that she wanted to be buried. She didn’t want that. So That’s interesting. It is very interesting with that. So back to the book, right, the things that it has in there. It has things about that’s certificate, about dealing with social security, identity, theft, wow, power of attorneys, banks and securities. So what the questions that it asked are? Who has the right to decide for the loved one to make those final decisions? What is the disposition and what are the options? Answering your question, with cremation or burial. Right. When is embalming necessary? Good Point. You just kind of think that everybody gets embolmd, but maybbe maybe not. You don’t have to. The only time that embalming is required and it’s not a funeral industry requirement. It’s actually a department of Health Requirement when you’re having a public viewing, when there are public people that are around and coming to view the body. If it was just the immediate family, the embalming is not required because they are immediate family. Interesting, very interesting. See, these are things I don’t know. I didn’t know these things so lots. So you know, when you’re are talking about families, and obviously there’s I’m sure that people are always on the same page when they come to you. Is that right now? They aren’t always on the same page and that’s why we really are trying to encourage people to have that talk while they’re healthy. HMM, not when they’re sick, not when they are on hospice, because sometimes people don’t know they they’re not thinking necessarily clearly. Are there as not expressing their wishes? Exactly? Yeah, exactly. So we are talking with Mr Dan White, and Dan you are now. I knew you had in a new position with blush Ellie. You are the community outreach managers. That correct, correct, correct, and what is that entail? But what is this new position? I know you were just in charge of abby view before, but now you’re over seeing kind of the entire you know, evergreenwash shelly operation, which gives you a lot more responsibility. It does. It gives us more responsibility to getting out and being involved in our communities a lot more. So we have two different sides. We have the at need and that’s when when someone’s experienced a loved one who’s right, right with a funeral director and they’ll meet with one of our family service counselors to handle the mimitary portion. With the community outreach we are going out and hopefully talking with people who are in a healthy state, Ryan meeting with couples, meeting with individuals so that they can talk about what they really want for their end of life celebrations and what things need to be cared for to prepare. And so that is a little bit larger river see. It’s a larger responsibility for sure. And then, obviously you know, I we’ve talked about this before, that the average cost of a funeral doesn’t like double every like few years, something like that. It’s yes, he see us. If you, if you were to take a look, Time magazine did a study back in one thousand nine hundred and seventy, I believe. Don’t hold me to the dates, but where they estimated that an average for a funeral and burial was approximately three thousand dollars. Fast forward to where we are today and it’s can be approaching twenty thousand dollars. Oh my goodness. Fast forward to two thousand and sixty, two thousand and seventy, we’re looking at close to over a hundred thousand dollars. So it does. And if somebody back in one thousand nine hundred and seventy said to you, Suzanne, you know and in two thousand and eighteen a funerals going to cost you between twenty to thirty thousand dollars, you go you’re crazy, right, but we all know what’s happened with inflation since then. Now, I mean, look at what cars costs. Look what how’s this cost? And so it makes perfect sense. So it really is a good investment to take care of it now, because it does lock in your pricing at two thousand and eighteen pricing. So even when we get to two thousand and seventeen, you’re not paying anything else. But look at the financial burden that you’ve saved your children or your loved ones. Well, exactly does occur, and there’s more inheritance for them, which is where there’s more inheritance and less stress, also peace of mind, knowing what I’m your wishes are. So one of the things that I’m really amazed about is you have a caregiver award and I had no idea about this. I was reading this in some of your materials. Fill me in on what that is. Well, what we do when one of our at need counselors and they meet with a funeral director, we will typically ask the family if this was expected, if their loved one was currently receiving the care from a caregiver and if they would like to nominate them for the caregiver of the month award. Then we will review all those and then choose one and then the family will be notified that their caregiver one. Then we will arranged to make a special presentation to the caregiver and it’s just not the certificate. They do get a certificate but they also get a nice little trophy that that’s made out of its clear glass and they can see that that they’re the caregiver of the month. But then we also give them a hundred dollar visa gift card. Wow, yeah, that’s pretty nice, with one stipulation, and that stipulation is that they spend it on themselves. They have to do that. Oh my goodness. Then we will take the caregiver to the months for the entire year and have them all come together and then we will have a little presentation and we feed them and have everybody a chance to talk. But then we draw for the caregiver of the year award and that typically is two hundred and fifty gift certificate for okay, corrent. Kind of stories do you hear about these families that you’ve given awards to? What about them? Yeah, like caregivers like. What kind of stories do you typically hear? We get a lot of stories from the families that say that if it was Suzanne was great and she was there every day for my dad and I would come in and dad would always just brag about the care that he was getting and we just knew that we could trust dryer right with and this. This could be a family member, it could be a paird caregiver, it could be anybody. Yes, is that correct? Yep. And we have given some to family members. We’ve given some to the caregivers at adult family homes. Uh Huh, those at at the places like evergreen hospice or right yes or provident. That is so incredible. So, Dan, how do we reach to the easiest way to reach me is probably by my cell phone, four to five, two, four, one, two, eight hundred and fifty three, or by email at d white at wash shelleycom. And we would definitely think that the caregivers out there would love to reach out to you, talk to you, talk to your family a little bit about you know, what are their expect you know what are their expectations and Sun An appointment with Dan find out. You know really if there’s some things that you haven’t covered in your family discussions and asked for the book. Yes, and absolute the book, absolutely Dan’s. Thank you again always, and thanks for being our expert of the month this month on our in our newsletter sage advice. All right, thanks for heaving. This has been a special presentation of answers for elders featuring evergreen, was shelley. For more information about Evergreen, was shelley. Their website is was Shelleycom? That’s WA SHALL ICOM
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Originally published March 10, 2018