I am considering this for my parents to try to get ahead of it the best I can and let a professional take the reins. I was a financial person in my former life and saw the value of fee for services when you don't have the time or inclination. The person is a "CMC, LNHA, Gerontologist"
I'm afraid of making a mistake. It's $180 per hour. She is local so would know of all the local options, rather than me calling all these different places and glazing over from sales pitches. Even calling the lifeline folks today it felt like she was angry that I said let me make sure my parents are OK with this set up.
Anyway, if anyone has successfully or unsuccessfully used one, pros/cons, learnings, I would love to hear about it. Thanks.
The county aging services in our area are pretty much income-based, and we don't qualify at this time although we could down the line if we live much longer!
I would never pay someone $180 an hour for that. Your local council on aging is a great resource and it’s free.
Who will be paying for the GCM? Hopefully it will be your parent's expense. Are you their PoA? If not, I'd be very careful about plunging money into care solutions when you don't have complete legal representation for them. And, unless you are literally a multi-millionaire, you won't be able to sustain paying on their behalf without depleting your own coffers for your own care.
I get that it is very time-consuming to provide the management. I'm a business partner with my husband, and much of what I do aside from my actual professional work revolves around bookkeeping for the business. It's boring and I dislike it. Now we're PoAs for 3 of our elders. More management. Even though we're now semi-retired and have a more flexible schedule, their care needs keep ramping up. One of them is in FL and we're in MN so I travel down there at least once a year to make sure everything is copacetic and matches my management efforts the rest of the year.
Maybe think about what you absolutely don't want to do and outsource that. But again, only if your parents are willing to pay for it, can pay for it, or you have robust resources.
In the end, the GCM will still need your input and participation on certain things no matter what. If you are PoA and it is active for one or both of your parents, it may make more sense to attempt to transition them into a good IL/AL community where they also have MC and LTC and accepts Medicaid.
Will your parents accept working with this "stranger"? Please continue to look through this forum: there is much to know and you seem to be at the beginning of this journey. There is a lot of great advice and wisdom to be found here. I wish I had found this forum back in 2016 when both my inlaws were broke, sick and falling apart.
I know that some people use them when there is no family nearby where the elderly LO is. In that scenario where the geriatric care manager is doing virtually all the hands on work, it could cost way more/ many more hours.
Great service and in some states they must be licensed by the state, have background checks and insurance.
Thought we had a place lined up for my Dad. After doing the care evaluation, my dad can't afford that. So waiting to hear from another home.
For the one I hired, the contract says that essentially I can terminate the relationship at any time, and only pay for the hours actually used. So that kept it "minimal risk" at first when evaluating how helpful the GCM was (as I posted below, she has been helpful)
This particular GCM has no minimum amount of hours and bills in 6 minute increments (so I'd better learn to keep it concise!)
She’s expensive, and in the beginning I took in a lodger to pay for her until I could get finances sorted to pay her out of mom’s bank acct. I utilize her services fairly sparely as a result of cost, but she has seriously saved my bacon a few times. In particular when I got covid and mom had an emergency, another time I was sick and mom had another emergency. This GCM lives closer to mom than I am.
I found her by calling the memory care place another relative was living in, then the GCM and I met in person to see if it was a match.
Absolutely best decision for me - having a backup ‘sibling’ with geriatric experience is huuuuuuuge.
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