[Music] As millions of baby boomers
retire many of them are choosing to age in
place, instead of moving to a facility.
Whether driven by financial need or just
a desire to be at home, millions
are staying in their home and
relying on family and paid in home
caregivers to help, but who is governing these
caregivers? How do you know if they're
qualified and capable of providing the
best care possible? Is there a way we can
become better caregivers? Joining me this
morning are Dawn Horsley of the National
Certification Council for Activity
Professionals and Scott Silknitter,
founder of Caregiving 101. good morning
to both of you. Good morning. Before we
start talking I want to read some
statistics that I found quite interesting. there are 45
million family caregivers and that number is
growing 70% of them are women, there are
70 million baby boomers, there are
only 17,000 nursing homes and 35,000
assisted living facilities in the U.S.,
certainly not enough beds for everyone.
No. And most families cannot afford this was
shocking four to ten thousand dollars per
month to live in a facility. This is a
problem. Those families that are keeping
someone at home tens of thousands of
them every day are realizing that they need
help that they can't do it on their
own anymore. It's draining.
Absolutely it is. And not to mention, expensive. It is and
there's no national standard so family members
really struggle to try to find a
qualified, trained individual that can help
with their quality of care and engage
them in an activity. And when you engage
them it's more than just the bingo or
arts-and-crafts it takes more than that
to help them reconnect right? Absolutely.
Absolutely and you know one of the
things with the benefits of activities
really has to do with so much more like
you said than bingo it can be anything
from developing their self-confidence to
even improving their sleep patterns.
That's that's a huge deal. Show me a
caregiver and I'll show you someone
who's exhausted, living on caffeine and
part of the problem with that and the
cause is their loved one during the day
they may be nodding off dozing in and
out of sleep all day. So at night they're
waking up because their sleep patterns
are disrupted. So of course when your
loved one wakes up, you as the caregiver
wake up. So we need to engage them, and
you brought some activities show me what
they are. Anything can be an activity
even having a conversation, having a book
to do Sudoku, doing a crossword, even
playing cards in fact let's let's use
cars this is a great example a lot of
national organizations say use playing a
card game with your with your senior is
something to do but what if your loved
one can't hold the cards in their hands
anymore? What if they don't know the
difference between a king and an ace or
don't even know what the number five is,
that's a problem for the caregiver in
the family. It is and one of the things
that as a caregiver you have to figure
out where someone is cognitively and
physically so that way you can offer an
activity that really empowers them to be
successful. You know caregivers have to use
communication techniques they have to
use persuasive techniques to get someone
to participate and the one thing about
communication is that the same techniques that you would use to
play a game of cards or a crossword
puzzle, you could use those same techniques
to encourage someone or to get
someone to take a bath or to take their
medicine or even to eat a meal. And
something even like as a puzzle right here?
Absolutely and how would you use? That's a larger
version of the golf tee game so if you have
pays and you're trying to get down to one
peg a lot of folks with dexterity
issues, Parkinson’s, stroke they can't
hold those little golf tees, dementia you
don't want them because you don't want them
eating a small piece so you there's
adaptive equipment to use, there's always
a way to get someone to do something and
do it on things that they enjoy doing.
And speaking of doing how does your
organization come into play here to help?
Well I'll tell you, NCCAP for the last 30 years has
been recognized by the federal
government as the certifying body and
activities. In fact we have put through over a
hundred and fifty thousand people
through our education and certification
process and one of the things that we did as
an organization was to take a look
at that traditional certification model
because many of them work in nursing
homes or assisted livings and really we
had to broaden our focus on quality of
life to include all care areas and we
start with the home care certification. And
can anyone become
home care certified? Yes they can there is
a criteria that has to be met however by
going to the website which is in ecap dot org
they can find exactly out that information the other thing we
want to recommend is that families use
the caregiving 101 activities for
the family caregiver book, so that way they
are on the same page with their
certified caregiver and here's the book
the caregiving 101. Very easy read
and very important. Absolutely any final
thoughts Scott? The home care
certification is is a game-changer for families
if you can imagine you're inviting a
stranger into your house, you're
interviewing them to take care of your your
father, your mother, your your parent, your
husband or wife. Not an easy thing to get.
Absolutely not but if you there's a
certification and you know that they've been
trained on communication skills, verbal
and nonverbal, if they've been
trained on working with behavioral a person
by that I mean someone who's screaming
and yelling at you like my mother
who was it was a sweet
choir singing person who's now swearing
like a sailor, yeah or my father who is
who walked into a room and asked the
same question over and over and over
and over and over again. You know that
person will be there for them. Absolutely
and so what NCCAP has done has created
standards for quality of life for all of
us. And you know Olga we took 30 years
of standards and education and
created the home care certification so that
we could help millions of family
caregivers to improve their quality of life
and that's exactly what we've done. And
give them peace of mind. Absolutely. Thank
you so much for your time, thank you,
give me that website on more time. N C C A P
dot org. Thanks again for your time. Thank you.
Thank you Scott. And if you'd like more information
go to our website it's the balancing act
dot com. [Music]