Caring Before Crisis: Planning, Advocacy, and Aging Well

Social worker and aging life care manager Amy McWilliams shares her journey from caring her aging parents to founding Not Your Average Joe, an advocacy practice where she provides Personalized Senior Advocate Care Management and Services that help aging adults and their families navigate complex care systems. She opens up about balancing parents’ independence with safety, and the importance of planning. McWilliams also emphasizes how small acts of advocacy can transform lives and discusses building trust with overwhelmed families, supporting neurodiverse clients, and what she’s learned from her daughter’s late autism diagnosis. 

Resources Mentioned:
Not Your Average Joe (care management practice; Metro Atlanta)
Advance Directive and POLST (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment)
Medicare; Medicaid waivers; Area Agency on Aging
Rehabilitation facilities; CNA training and staffing
Aging Life Care Association (ALCA)
Virtual reality autism training experience
126127 Legacy Foundation (medical mission work led by Dr. Benjamin Abraham)