Getting the Info Out, with Larry Nisenson

*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 is a podcast from a qualified senior care provider, hurt, on the answers for elders radio show. And Welcome back everyone to answers for alders radio. I am here with Larry Nye Inson and he is part of Jen worth financial life insurance and he has overseeing a program called Care Scout, which is a program for caregiver support services, and we spent the first half hour of the program talking a little bit about the family caregiver crisis and you know, as before we begin this hour, Larry, I am reminded of a quote by Rosalind Carter and I think many of us in the industry of heard it, but maybe a lot of our listeners haven’t heard it, and it’s there’s a quote that she makes is called there four kinds of people in this world, those who who have been caregivers, those who currently are caregivers, those who will be caregivers and those who will need caregivers. The point, I guess said today’s interview is it applies to everyone that ever touches life. They’re going to be an issue with caregiving in their life somehow and there you certainly have a background and caregiving and I would love to hear a little bit about your story. I would love to share it. I think that’s a great quote by Rosalind and it is true. It’s borne out that statistically we know that seven out of seven, out of every ten people over the age of sixty five to seventy percent of those folks are going to have a long term care event and need help. That astonishing number, especially because with the baby boomers over tenzero baby boomers a day turnage sixty five and that’s going to happen for the next decade. So think about the number of people that are going to be caregivers. It is it’s estimated that that number is going to be seventy eighty million people by the time the baby boomers crest. And and to your to your point, I I am a caregiver. I’m a caregiver in both the traditional sense and in what I would describe as are more complete view of caregiving. And I know people think about caregivers as being primary caregivers, as being I provide ongoing daily care to somebody for some portion of the day, and that is certainly the traditional view and my story is typical of probably a million other stories which is I got a call from my parents on a Tuesday afternoon. They were driving down the highways. They were going to my father’s cardiologist. He was in his mid seventy at the time and everything was fine, except he was driving a little crazy. He was driving in between lanes and my mother said to him, you know, what are you doing, and he said to me, I don’t know. He said to my mother, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Him driving perfectly and I don’t know what possessor. But she said pull over to the side of the road, there’s something going on and they called the doctor. They doctor said get in here for an x Ray. They took a cat scan and as it turned out, my father had a tumor and on his brain. He had a tumor the side of the Mary. Yes, just like that, very boom. Now the good news is and the story does have a happy ending, because he not only did he survive and thrive, I’m he went from being paralyzed. He was paralyzed after surgery from the neck down, because they don’t know why. Honestly, they couldn’t figure it out then and they still can’t. He has about ninety eight or ninety nine percent use of his body. His mind is as sharp as ever. As matter of fact, he’s about his cantankerous. He’s about his cantankerous. Is an eighty five year old as he was as a seventy five year old. So he’s great. This is a great story, except that when I got the call and I said, my mother explained to me what’s going on and I ran to the hospital and my brother ran to the hospital and now my mother, my brother and I are sitting there saying what do we do? I don’t know what to do. We’re have to figure out what. What Long Term Care Facility? What Rehab Facility? If he’s going to be paralyzed for the rest of his life, what does that mean? Now? He had long term care insurance, so this wasn’t a financial question. He was full. He bought a policy years ago and he was able to use that policy to get the best care out there. But the amount of concisions that we had to make were incredible and I’d been in the industry, in the insurance fields, for over twenty years and this point and still had no idea what to do. And I made a decision that day that I was not going to be unprepared to deal with this again and we, as I said, my father story has a great ending because he’s still alive today. He’s eighty five years old, he’s in great shape, he’s fully as all of his functions and he’s an awesome guy, but also nation good for we struggled with every decision we made and we followed our way through it and fortunately it worked out, but we know that many, many caregivers are they make mistakes along the way because they just don’t know what to do exactly. And and Larry, what you’re saying is so valid because I can relate to sum much of what he’s saying. I mean, I will say, I always say, elder care is a truly the hardest job you’ll ever do in your life, caregiving, but it’s also your greatest privilege. But that privilege comes responsibility and there’s all kinds of decisions that you have to make because it’s so interconnected and every single thing you do. If you make a decision to go into a long term care facility, the financial piece is part of it, the legal piece is part of it, the health care piece of the hospital that you’re going to be associated with the doctor that you’re going to be associated with, how you’re going to make that shift of changing that living situation. All of those pieces have to line up and you have to make a million decisions through that process. It’s not an easy situation, for sure, and certainly providing resources like you guys do, you guys are one of the few companies out there that really take this seriously and you know, thank you from the bottom of my heart because I know what you’re doing every day for family caregivers out there and certainly we want to make sure an answer for elders. Your resources certainly available. So how do people find again, Care Scout and done worth? Where do you find the resources? Show? The first place they should go is Jen worthcom GE and Wour t generalcom and when they when they go to our site, they’ll find so much around education. As a matter of fact, one of the first tabs they’re going to see is called aging and you and it is an education and awareness site. It talks about it has empathetic views. So if you’re a caregiver and want to understand what your loved ones are going through, we actually have a way of demonstrating hearing and vision impairments. We have a way of showing you what mobility challenges look like so you can really understand what your loved one goes through. There’s plenty of information there around how to be a caregiver. What kind of what, what kind of responsibilities? We share a bunch of stories. We know that one of the hardest parts about being a caregiver is the feeling of isolation, right, the feeling that I’m going through this uniquely aimen alone, and we also know that that’s could be further from the truth. And so what we try and do is we share on our website so many stories about family caregivers. Not all of them have rosy endings. There are lots of them, Susan’s, you know and I know that have really terrible endings, but the reality of it is that’s part of the aging process to and so they go to general though they can find many resources. In addition, if they go to Care Scout, one word, care scoutcom. That’s where we really house all of our caregiving service information. So we have you’ll love the name of this we have our website is called elder answers, and that elder answer website is where they can find some of the conversation starters that I reference them some more material around as a caregiver, what types of what type of help should you ask for? How you have conversations with your employer? What are some of the sort of tricks of the trade and they can do and they can access that and do a little bit of research on their own and and then, if they’re interested, they can certainly reach out to us and we’re happy to talk to any of your listeners about well some of their concerns. You know, I want to explore care scout quite a bit, especially when it comes to employers. But I also want to talk now you’re talking about the employee and having, you know, being an employee. You touched on earlier, but I would love to have you talk a little bit about the family medical leave to act and how does it applied to caregivers and what is their legal right? So I’m going to I’m going to first off say that I am not an attorney, not certainly a labor attorney, and you know I’m going to talk in a very general sense. But righte what the family leave act allows for is for an employee to take that time to work with their HR department to take the time required to work and help their family. Right. It allows them to take unpaid time off, it allows them, depending on their company, to work through using some of their flex time that they may have and it requires the employer to hold their job for them, so somebody can’t be fired. There are lots of parameters around that, but it really does provide the protection for all employees to be able to assess what their family needs are and to make the decisions that they have. We know that from an employers standpoint, you know the cost of lost productivity when they have family caregivers and don’t work with them. The cost to the employers in the US economy right is over twenty five billion kilver, twenty five billion dollars of lost productivity. That’s what absenteeism zombiism right. So when somebody shows up to work but they’re really not working because they’re in the middle of doing some caregiving stuff. So when we talk to employers about that, what they say to us is please tell us how to help our employees. We don’t want turnover, we don’t want people leaving the workforce. We know that the statistics around the number of caregivers, family caregivers that ultimately end up leaving the job is significant. Right over fifty percent of that are caregivers. By the way, we know already admit to showing up late, leaving early, calling out sick, and that hurts the employer to and the employers want to help. So again, it’s a matter of putting your hand up and saying please, I need some help, and we found employers that are certainly willing to do what they can to help with their employees. So how can we find the best solutions for employers to help their employees? Right back in the next segment. Answers for elders radio show with Susan Newman. Hopes you found this podcast useful in your journey of navigating senior care. Check out more podcasts like this to help you find qualified senior care experts and areas of financial, legal, health and wellness and living options. Learn about our radio show, receive our monthly newsletter, receive promotional discounts and meet our experts by clicking on the banner to join the Senior Advocate Network at answers for elders RADIOCOM. Now there is one place to find the answers for elders