Aging Life Care Professionals with Susan Kelsey

💡Join Kelly Augspurger as she interviews Susan Kelsey, a certified aging life care specialist and the founder of Assistance Plus, in this insightful episode of the Steadfast Care Planning podcast.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 They discuss the important role of aging life care professionals in managing the care of older adults and the invaluable support they provide to families living at a distance from their loved ones.

🔍 Susan shares her experiences and reveals the everyday challenges and superpowers of a care specialist, offering practical advice on navigating healthcare crises and preparing for the aging continuum.

In this episode they covered:

🔹 Description of an aging life care specialist's background in healthcare.

🔹 Challenges faced by families living at a distance from their older adult relatives.

🔹 Examples of day-to-day tasks, such as managing medications, dealing with emergencies, and overseeing financial matters.

🔹 Advocacy and logistics support provided within assisted living environments.

🔹 Assisting with doctor's appointments and communicating medical information to family members.

🔹 Importance of building and leveraging a network of trusted experts, including attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors.

🔹  Developing deep relationships with older adult clients and their families.

🔹 Leveraging personal connections and referrals to find suitable specialists.

For more information about Susan Kelsey's services, visit:
www.APlusCareManagement.com
Or, explore resources available at:
www.AgingLifeCare.org
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➡️ Watch this podcast: https://youtu.be/awOvA5hLbOA

#LongTermCare #AgingLifeCareSpecialist #SteadfastCarePlanning #LongTermCareInsurance #APlusCareManagement 

For additional information about Kelly, check her out on Linkedin or www.SteadfastAgents.com.

To explore your options for long-term care insurance, click here.

Steadfast Care Planning podcast is made possible by AMADA Senior Care and Steadfast Insurance LLC.

Come back next time for more helpful guidance!

Transcript

Kelly Augspurger [00:00:02]:
Hey everyone, welcome to Steadfast Care Planning where we plan for care to live well. I'm your guide, Kelly Augspurger. With me today is Susan Kelsey, founder and owner of Assistance Plus. Susan is a certified aging life care specialist with an extensive background working with older adult clients in hospitals, rehab centers, skilled nursing facilities, and home health for over 25 years. Welcome, Susan.

Susan Kelsey [00:00:27]:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Kelly Augspurger [00:00:28]:
Glad you could be here with us today. We're going to be talking about aging life care professionals and how they can help manage care. So, Susan, can we jump right in?

Susan Kelsey [00:00:37]:
Yes, certainly. We are a group of specialists. Most of us are in the healthcare field have done something in that healthcare field before jumping into the aging life care specialist position. The field has a lot of social workers, nurses. There might be therapists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, psychologists, and they all have some sort of background in healthcare. And we then try to use our knowledge of this to guide people, either the older adult, or oftentimes their family members, who are contacting us because they live at a distance from their parents, their aunt, their uncle. I've had cousins that people have just felt responsible for, and they are looking to have a little bit of peace of mind at a distance, or maybe plan for problems, or often it's during a crisis that we get called.

Kelly Augspurger [00:01:36]:
I can imagine, especially....(healthcare crisis) Right. And as we see, a lot of families in the United States do not live down the street from each other anymore. Right. Or in the same town we have family members with maybe they're across the city, or state, or country. Right. They could be hundreds of miles away.

Kelly Augspurger [00:01:52]:
And so to have an advocate, that's what it really sounds like. We've got an advocate within a care specialist who is there with this expertise and experience to really help be there physically for the older adult and then help with logistics. Is that right?

Susan Kelsey [00:02:09]:
Yes. And most of these people, maybe they're a couple, and each one may have gone through this with maybe seeing their parent go through it with their grandparent, but they haven't been through it themselves. And it's frightening for them. They just don't know what to do, and so they end up calling us. Many times I hear people tell me, "Oh, I wish I would have known about your profession when I was going through this with my parents."

Kelly Augspurger [00:02:33]:
Absolutely. It becomes very real when it's in your family and you are dealing with this one on one versus you've heard of this happening before. You have a friend, or maybe a neighbor that has needed some care, but now it's happening to you. Where do we start? What do we do? Right. It could be overwhelming.

Susan Kelsey [00:02:50]:
Yes, it really can. And especially people these days, like you said, who are at a distance, they have their own obligations, they're working, they have children that they need to take care of. And even the people who are empty nesters, or they are still concerned, they just want to do the right thing. They're just not sure. So that's where we fit in.

Kelly Augspurger [00:03:10]:
Got it. So, Susan, tell us some of the superpowers of a aging life care specialist. Like, what's the work life like for a care specialist? What is the day to day and what are your superpowers?

Susan Kelsey [00:03:23]:
Yes. Well, we all have to be really familiar with the healthcare system in our area. Who are the professionals that you can turn to? We need to know the rules of the healthcare system. Medicare rules are very important to us. Long-term care insurance. How do we get our clients to access their long-term care benefits? And so that know, probably the main thing that we need to do is have knowledge of the healthcare system. Then we also, I tell people a lot of times, I have a doctoral degree. We don't need to have extra degrees in order to go to the pharmacy and pick up medication when they're sick at the last minute.

Susan Kelsey [00:04:04]:
That might be running over to, and I did this last week, to one of the drugstores. We got a prescription called in and they were closing at 7:00. And I called them at 6:30 to say, "Is the prescription ready?" And they hadn't even taken it off their answering machine yet.

Kelly Augspurger [00:04:19]:
Oh, my goodness.

Susan Kelsey [00:04:19]:
Had I not done that extra step, they may not have been ready for me. So you have to be proactive. Many times we hire things for people that you might not imagine. We have somebody that goes out and cleans a litter box for one of my clients.

Kelly Augspurger [00:04:33]:
No kidding?

Susan Kelsey [00:04:34]:
Yeah. Once a week they come and thoroughly clean a litter box. We put them in contact with caregivers from agencies that we trust and that we have worked with. We will be at the hospital at 10:00 at night if they have an emergency. And last week I was in the emergency room with somebody from 5:30 on Saturday night till midnight till we got everything squared away. One of your superpowers is you have to go without sleep sometimes.

Kelly Augspurger [00:05:01]:
Yes!

Susan Kelsey [00:05:01]:
And I had one care manager call me once and she was there. She had sent a client to the emergency room again on a Saturday night, 8:00 p.m. and she was there at 12:30 a.m. And typically our rule is we like to stay with the client, advocate for them because most of the time when they are in the hospital, they are not fit to advocate for themselves.

Kelly Augspurger [00:05:21]:
Right.

Susan Kelsey [00:05:21]:
And so we stay until they get assigned to a room and they're taken to their room. Or these days we have people staying in emergency rooms overnight because we don't have rooms available. Sometimes we stay until the person is somewhat stabilized. So she was there at 12:30 and she called and she said, "I am falling asleep. I'm not doing a good job. Can you come?" So I relieved her, got there about 1:00 and stayed there till 3:30 till we got him into a room.

Kelly Augspurger [00:05:49]:
Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Long hours.

Susan Kelsey [00:05:51]:
Yes. You need to be able to, if you have to walk a dog. Once again, nothing that takes any special expertise, but we help manage what we call daily money management. At some point, some of the people can't manage all their bills that are coming in. We go through the mail, we help them pay. We don't pay for it, but we help them pay their bills. We get a lot set up on auto bank draft if we can, or onto the credit card. So there's not much that has to be done each month.

Susan Kelsey [00:06:19]:
That's very important for them. Make sure that these utilities get paid. I frequently get calls from people that mom or dad haven't been paying their bills and their water is turned off. "What do we do?" And we need to know plumbers, we need to know electricians because things go wrong in the homes. We need to know somebody who comes to the home and does haircuts and comes to your home because we have people, I have a 99 year old gentleman right now. We can't easily get him to the barber, but he wants his haircut. So we have somebody that comes to the home. So there are all sorts of specialists that we need to be able to convene with and get these services.

Susan Kelsey [00:07:03]:
Insurance agents. We have people switching from different types of insurances. So much easier to go through an insurance agent to try to get this taken care of. So there's all sorts of things that we need to know. The other thing that we know is the senior communities in the area, which ones are the ones that we can trust, that we know that the care is good. That's where family members get very concerned. Are they making the right decision?

Kelly VO [00:07:29]:
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Kelly Augspurger [00:07:54]:
Once a person is in a facility, maybe it's assisted living, Susan, do you help even when they're in the facility? Are you needed at that point? Once they're in a community, or facility, or at that point it's, "You're going to get the care and the services that you need there."?

Susan Kelsey [00:08:08]:
That's a good question. We go into assisted livings quite a bit for our clients, even the ones that we have not moved, let's say. And that's another thing that we do. We have to know the move managers, so we do some of it ourselves. But a lot of times when we have big moves, we call in companies that will help move the person. But when they're in assisted living, we still have to advocate for them. A lot of times they're worried about things there. I'm not sure if I'm getting my medicine at the right time.

Susan Kelsey [00:08:37]:
Can you check on that? I know they didn't give me this medicine today. We take people to doctors appointments, and that is really giving family members peace of mind. We ask the questions that maybe the family member wants to have asked at the doctor's appointment. A lot of times our older adults, they go there, they don't ask those questions. And when they come out, family member says, "Well, what did the doctor say?" And they say, "I don't know."

Kelly Augspurger [00:09:03]:
They don't know. They don't remember.

Susan Kelsey [00:09:05]:
Yes, exactly. So we go there, we take notes. We either write it up and we try to, we write it up for the client, make a notebook for them so they have copies of those notes of what was said. But we also send an email, and that's the wonderful thing. We can send an email to the whole family, or just maybe the healthcare power of attorney, whatever they want in each family situation, so they get to know what has gone on.

Kelly Augspurger [00:09:30]:
Oh, wonderful.

Susan Kelsey [00:09:31]:
Yeah. So that's really helpful. Same thing when they're in the hospital.

Kelly Augspurger [00:09:35]:
Oh, okay. Wonderful.

Susan Kelsey [00:09:36]:
We go to the hospital. We interact with the nurses. We will get them the reports. What happened? They fell. Do they have a compression fracture of their spine? We'll get that information for them probably quicker than they can. We do that a lot.

Kelly Augspurger [00:09:50]:
A lot of skills, Susan, that you have as an aging life care specialist.

Susan Kelsey [00:09:54]:
It's a busy profession. You get calls all the time. There are emergencies that happen. We stay quite busy.

Kelly Augspurger [00:10:01]:
And a network, too. It sounds like you must have a very large network of other trusted experts that you need to lean on for referrals. Right. Because there's so many different aspects of really helping older adults navigate the aging continuum. So you need to have these other trusted experts in your circle.

Susan Kelsey [00:10:18]:
We need attorneys this time of year. One of the things that I do, if I'm involved and the family would like me to do that, or the person would like me to do this, I gather all the tax documents during the year, especially for the people where I'm doing the daily money management. We have folders where we put all our tax documents. So at tax time, we gather everything together and we take it to the accountant, or we send it to the accountant in Maine, where they're still using their accountant. So that we need to have attorneys, we need to have accountants, we need to have, sometimes financial advisors. And I deal with the financial advisors. I'm not the durable power of attorney or the healthcare power of attorney, but if the person is capable and competent, then together we will interact with the financial advisor to make sure that they have enough money to pay some of these extraordinary bills. So we have our sort of fingers in many aspects of a person's life because it's just overwhelming to them and it gives them some peace of mind, too.

Kelly Augspurger [00:11:23]:
Oh, and the family.

Susan Kelsey [00:11:24]:
Yes, and the family as well.

Kelly Augspurger [00:11:26]:
Absolutely. This sounds like a very personal job, Susan. You are with your older client adults, older adult clients, for many hours, right? Maybe in the same day, or over a week, or over months, over years, potentially. And so you get to know them very well, I would imagine. And so I would imagine, too, you have to have a very good bedside manner and be able to communicate well with other people. And just you're sharing a life with them.

Susan Kelsey [00:11:55]:
You really are. And you develop deep friendships not only with them, but with their family members. I had a call. It was last week from the grandson of one of my clients. She passed away in 2010. Already her daughter, his mother, now is going through some cognitive changes, and he didn't know who else to call, so he called me, and I have referred him to our website for the aging life care professionals, where he can find somebody in his, or in her zip code. We can enter a zip code or a city, and you can find somebody who can do these same things 600 miles away.

Kelly Augspurger [00:12:38]:
And that was my next question, Susan.

Susan Kelsey [00:12:40]:
Oh, OK.

Kelly Augspurger [00:12:40]:
Yeah. Where can we find aging life care professionals? So you have on your website, is that where you can do it or other places as well?

Susan Kelsey [00:12:48]:
I'm sure I allude to our association, but when I get calls personally, "My uncle Joe is in Pasadena and he's got cancer now. And you helped my mom. Can you find somebody in Pasadena?" And I will tell them to go to this website, which is www.AgingLifeCare.org, and they can, there's a little tab that says find an aging life care expert and you can put in a zip code, a city, and then you can get a display of the people in that area that you can affect. It really is, and I have done that myself. When I have moved people to other parts of the country, which probably at least two times a year, I'm moving somebody to live someplace else, not just locally. And then I rely on care managers in those areas to deal with the family member and to help with the move on that end. I get to know other care managers that way.

Kelly Augspurger [00:13:47]:
Oh, that's great. That's wonderful.

Kelly VO [00:13:48]:
The Steadfast Care Planning podcast is sponsored by AMADA Senior Care. AMADA provides complimentary consultation with a senior care advisor to find the right care from in-home caregiving to community care, as well as long-term care insurance claim advocacy and unique support partnerships for financial advisors to address family transitions and generational retention. To learn more, visit www.SteadfastWithAmada.com.

Kelly Augspurger [00:14:18]:
Who would you say would benefit from working with a care manager, or also known as an aging life care specialist? Right. Sounds like people with families where they may not be nearby. Can you define that maybe a little bit more?

Susan Kelsey [00:14:31]:
Yeah. The groups that I think of are local people who just don't have any support system. Their family is all at a distance, and that's when it's very helpful. It's helpful for those family members as well. It gives them peace of mind. There are lots of people who don't have family, who didn't get married, who didn't have children. I've had cousins, I've had sisters and brothers helping. But sometimes I can't get over the commitment that these family members who are not children have for their relative. Some people just don't have anybody at all.

Susan Kelsey [00:15:10]:
And so we go in there and we become a really big part of their life. One of the things we have to do is develop trust, and we do get trust relationships with the people that we work with. So that's another group. There are people locally that I work with who are working and they have parents here. They've moved their parents here to be closer to them, but they realize they just don't have the time. They don't know all the resources. And so they will ask us for some help even though they live near them. And another group is often couples where one is impaired and the other isn't, and the one spouse is overwhelmed with caring for the other.

Susan Kelsey [00:15:52]:
And often it is with some form of dementia. I deal with a lot of people with different diseases, but probably the most common is with some type of dementia.

Kelly Augspurger [00:16:03]:
Which seems like it's more common than ever before, Susan.

Susan Kelsey [00:16:06]:
Yes, because we're living longer. We are, yeah. And that's the greatest risk factor for developing dementia is age. And so the longer we live, the greater the chances of developing that disorder. And that can be very tough for a family member. The other thing we see is physically, when it's a wife caring for a husband, she just cannot physically do some of the moving that has to be done. And I tell them, "I don't want both of you on the floor. You can't help him get out of the wheelchair."

Kelly Augspurger [00:16:39]:
Right.

Susan Kelsey [00:16:40]:
And I've had it happen where the wife and the husband are both injured, and we have to call for help for both of them. So it's often the wife that has the problem with the physical. But still, I've had somebody who the husband is so busy taking care of his wife, making sure she takes her medications. He doesn't take his medication and he gets a stroke, or he falls asleep because he's exhausted and he started cooking and he burns the chicken in the frying pan. All sorts of things like that happen.

Kelly Augspurger [00:17:11]:
Caregiver burnout.

Susan Kelsey [00:17:13]:
Right.

Kelly Augspurger [00:17:13]:
It's a very real thing. And oftentimes we do see that the caregiver, they might need care sooner than later because they are exhausting themselves in caring for a family member.

Susan Kelsey [00:17:24]:
It's the same thing with the airplane. They tell you to, if you have a child, the oxygen mask comes down, you take the air, then give it to your child. You've got to, as a caregiver, you have to come up for air sometimes.

Kelly Augspurger [00:17:36]:
Yeah, absolutely. Definitely need a break in order to continue to be able to care for another person and for your own health. Yes, very important. Well, Susan, what are some things that we can do to prepare for a healthcare crisis?

Susan Kelsey [00:17:49]:
That's a really good question. And I think one of the main things that I often tell people is first they have to have all their documents in place so that they have a healthcare power of attorney. And they look at these documents and not just leave them safe in the drawer wherever. To make sure that the person who is designated as their health care or their durable power of attorney for finances is still capable of doing it. A lot of times you have a spouse that you have selected. And now that spouse has Alzheimer's disease, they can't do their job there. So we try to do that. We try to look at the legal documents and make sure that they are still in place to have some sort of discussion about what your desires are with your family. And I know this is the hardest things that people do, is trying to broach that topic of what do you want in case of an emergency. What do you want? Everybody says, "I want to stay in my home no matter what."

Susan Kelsey [00:18:52]:
I try to keep people in their homes, and I say, as long as it's safe and it's financially feasible. So we need to have these documents in place. We need to have the conversation with your family members to see what they want. And a lot of times I hear people say, "I promised my mother I would never put her in a nursing home." "Well, mom is unable to stay at home, and caregivers at 24 hours a day are very, very expensive." That's more expensive than a nursing home. I have made homes into nursing homes. We have taken out the furniture, put them in storage, put a hospital bed in there, a reclining chair, an extra chair for a caregiver, brought in places to store some of the equipment that you need.

Susan Kelsey [00:19:38]:
Bring in the oxygen. You can do it in some cases, but it's expensive.

Kelly Augspurger [00:19:43]:
Yeah. 24 hours care, it could easily be over $20,000 a month.

Susan Kelsey [00:19:47]:
Yes.

Kelly Augspurger [00:19:48]:
At least here in the Midwest. So, yeah, it may be what you want, but is that feasible, financially feasible?

Susan Kelsey [00:19:56]:
Yes, and we do that. That's one of the things. When we go in to do our initial assessment, we look at, as best we can, their legal documents. We talk about the finances. A lot of times that's a sensitive subject. We can't quite delve into it right away. But as we get to know the person, develop a trust relationship with them, we can start talking about the finances. Often they will talk with us and not with their own family members about their finances.

Susan Kelsey [00:20:23]:
We are a trusted person for them. We try to make sure that they are safe in their home. Oftentimes we have them wearing the personal emergency pendants so that if there is an emergency, they can either press for some help, or if they fall, they have auto fall detection on that. And if they can't speak, that will automatically bring out the EMS for them. So that's a very important piece.

Kelly Augspurger [00:20:51]:
Okay. And I'm sure we probably could talk about this for hours, Susan, and just what other things people can do to prepare for a health crisis. But we don't have that kind of time today. But Susan, give us some final advice on how people can plan for care to live well. What else would you like to add?

Susan Kelsey [00:21:05]:
I would say that family members should have that discussion with their loved one, to sit down with them and ask what they want out of the last years of their life. I sometimes think that it's not easy to do that. And maybe you can use like a little springboard by saying, "My friend Danielle's mother had a stroke and she couldn't speak anymore and she couldn't tell her anymore what she wanted. You would be doing me a favor. Do this for me."

Kelly Augspurger [00:21:36]:
Right.

Susan Kelsey [00:21:36]:
Let's talk about this now before we're in a crisis. I think that's an important discussion to have.

Kelly Augspurger [00:21:42]:
Agree. Be proactive.

Susan Kelsey [00:21:44]:
Yes.

Kelly Augspurger [00:21:44]:
Susan, where can people find more information about your services and how you help people?

Susan Kelsey [00:21:49]:
The www.AgingLifeCare.org, www.AgingLifeCare.org is the parent association and they can go there. There's wonderful information there. I have a website also, which is part of my practice is called Assistance Plus. And the website is www.APlusCareManagement.com. And the association for their website has so much information on it, it's wonderful. And then also, as I said before, you can find somebody in your area by using that tab that says find an aging life care expert. Yeah. Just call and talk to somebody and I think you'll find that most everybody is willing to give you some time.

Susan Kelsey [00:22:34]:
I will call anybody that calls me who has a parent in this area. I talk with the spouse of somebody. I talk with single people who don't have somebody. So I think you'll find that most of us will talk with you and give you some basic information that you can go from there.

Kelly Augspurger [00:22:51]:
Well, Susan, clearly you have a heart for this and that you have a commitment and that you love what you do. I really appreciate your time and expertise today. Thanks so much.

Susan Kelsey [00:23:00]:
Thank you so much for just talking with me about this. So glad.

Kelly Augspurger [00:23:04]:
Have a great day.