The World of Eldercare | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

SUMMARY: In this episode, Shaun Toomey and Matt Zaun talk about eldercare and what you can do if you have aging parents that need help.

SHAUN TOOMEY BIO: Shaun is the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for Care Advantage.

For more info:
Shaun's LinkedIn
Care Advantage Website

MATT ZAUN BIO: Matt is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who empowers organizations to attract more clients through the art of strategic storytelling. Matt’s past engagements have catalyzed radical sales increases for over 300 organizations that range from financial institutions to the health and wellness industry.

Matt shares his expertise in persuasion with executives, sales professionals, and entrepreneurs, who he coaches on the art of influence and how to leverage this for profits and impact.

For more info, check out Matt Zaun HERE. 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors.

Sean, welcome to the stories of traction podcast.

ShaunToomey, Care Advantage, Inc. (Care Advantage)

Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. Thanks for your time. I know you're extremely busy. I really appreciate your time today.

the reason why I wanted to have you on, it's because this is a very unique topic, at least for me.

It's something that I'm fascinated with partly because very few people talk about this. few people want to talk about this.

feel like this is a topic people avoid until it's too late. So I want to just give a little bit of clarity to your industry as well as people.

people that might need your services sooner than they want to admit. So, I want to talk about elder care, and I want to start off by talking about individuals who have been extremely successful in their life.

So, whether they're C-suite or VPs and they've worked their guts out, they have a mast, whether it's a small fortune or a team's of people that listen to them and they have had an impact and a lot of them are pouring into their communities through nonprofit work.

So, they've done great things and then they come to grips with the idea that maybe they can't even take care of themselves anymore.

So, can you walk us through just the mental load that it takes to transition from being very successful into having you reach out to your industry for care?

ShaunToomey, Care Advantage, Inc. (Care Advantage)

Yes, absolutely. I'm glad we're, you framed it that way. So, And they should be the ones doing the support.

But the reality is, we're all human, and sometimes our needs just become what they are. And so whether it's a physical need, some oftentimes people have their physical body begins to break down through arthritis or through an episode that might happen, a stroke or something like that.

And they just need that extra level of support to help with their personal care. On the flip side, some people's bodies are intact, and they begin to have cognitive decline.

And that's also a time when people need services like ours to come in. So what we try to do is create strategies and kind of outline how a little bit of support can prevent you from needing a lot of support.

And oftentimes that's a great way to start services like ours.

Matt Zaun 

So I appreciate you mentioning that and while you're talking it brought up a conversation that I had a while back with a gentleman named Jacob Brown.

So Jacob Brown shared a fascinating story with me regarding his rise and fall in the NFL. And it's amazing because a lot of people will see incredible superstar athletes and it's almost like a fantasy world.

We put them on a pedestal. We think it's a glitz and glamour industry. It's amazing. Look at tens of thousands of people watching them and he really shared part part of the horrors of the NFL where a lot of people tie their identity up in it.

And then when they break a leg or when they severely injure themselves and they're no longer NFL athletes, there's a tremendous amount of mental health issues that come along with that.

And I don't think this is being talked about enough when it comes to people transitioning into the next stage of their lives because there's a similar idea where someone

has an incredibly successful life, and then they're not even successful to the point of being able to take care of themselves.

So there's a major, major block. Now, I believe that the only real research done on something even remotely close is when it comes to veterans coming back from war.

A very few studies have been put out regarding transitioning someone from, you know, successful to being retired to needing home care.

So a lot of it falls, I'm guessing, on the adult child. You know, you had mentioned to me a few times that it's not uncommon for an adult child to be the one contacting.

So for anyone listening that might be hearing the initial start of this conversation thinking, oh, I'm way off from needing any kind of home care.

Well, what would be like some points of action that you would give to someone that if they are, if this situation,

and is thrown at them, what would the adult child do to start the process of getting their parent into one of your services?

ShaunToomey, Care Advantage, Inc. (Care Advantage)

Very, that's a frequent situation. by the way, we've cared for NFL, former NFL players.

Matt Zaun 

Oh, wow.

ShaunToomey, Care Advantage, Inc. (Care Advantage)

You know, because there's, again, there's physical needs there. And then oftentimes, you know, it's a very violent sport, but then there's also the CTE that's happened and they've done a lot of studies on that.

And that's that, you know, dementia, it's a form of dementia, really. those folks really need help. So we're not, we're familiar with that as well.

But back to what you were saying. Yeah, it's sometimes a scenario will be where mom and dad live in an apartment or they've downsized from, you know, their home to an apartment, or they still live in their original home.

And And over the holiday season or on a visit, the family will come to spend time with their parents or their loved ones, and they'll start to recognize some things that look unusual.

And if I'm speaking to the adult child, I'm talking about food that's rotting away in the refrigerator, kind of an unkempt home.

Like stains on the clothes, like not really, dad's usually a sharp dresser, or mom's usually sharp dresser, they're kind of wearing sweatpants and the same thing over and over again.

And it's not really that clean. Medications out on the table that don't look like in order. just a general on-campus.

And so that's unusual for their parents. And when people see that, oftentimes we'll get a call. where the adults son or daughter will say, know, I was visiting my parents over the holidays and I noticed this.

So just having an awareness of what's going on in the home and, you know, not being in denial about it.

I think that's a big part of it as well, both for the client and for their children. And they don't want to offend their parents or anything.

So you don't have to say anything, but I think you were asking what the next step is. You can either make contact with a company like a home care company like ours, but there's also a really great industry that sprung up over the last 20 years.

And it was formerly known as geriatric care management. The industry's rebranded itself as aging life care managers now. But what they really are are typically social workers or nurses.

And they really understand. family dynamics, they really understand social work so they know how to address kind of challenging issues and things like that.

But in addition to that, they have made themselves a like a care coordination resource. So when somebody reaches out to them, a geriatric care manager or an aging life care manager gives them the scenario, one of their team members can can meet with that family and give advice on ways to address the issue or find a resource for them, whether it's a caregiver or a physical therapist or some other need a durable medical equipment, which would be a walker or a wheelchair, things like that.

So I always we frequently recommend reaching out to care managers, we call them for resources because they really do have their great resources.

And so I I strongly recommend families consult with a care manager.

Matt Zaun 

That's really good advice and I appreciate you mentioning that. I find it interesting that there's been a reoccurring theme that I've noticed recently where I go to an event, I'm asking people how they're doing and they'll say, oh, know, work's going great, but I'm really stressed about my parents.

They're not doing well. And what's fascinating to me is a lot of this is coming from Gen Xers. So their parents are starting to age.

They never thought that they would need to be dealing with this during that quote unquote sandwich generation where basically they're taking care of young kids and now they're trying to take care of their older parents.

And can you just point light to this that they're not alone? Like, there's a lot of people that are experiencing this.

We have an aging population. Can you just speak to just how large of an industry this is and how many people, you know, may need care like this in the future.

ShaunToomey, Care Advantage, Inc. (Care Advantage)

So there's a few things that can, first let me say to the listeners, you are definitely not alone. There's lots of people that are going through very similar scenarios.

And there are resources out there to even support groups. mean, if you're a folks are into that, there are ways to find support groups for this thing.

Because it is very difficult to watch somebody that you love go into decline. So you're definitely not alone. But in terms of the size and scope of the issue, we were talking a little bit leading up to our conversation here.

And in the past, the elder care industry, the personal home care industry that care advantage operates in typically was sort of a cottage industry, small mom and pop shops with a couple

of a handful of clients or a few, know, a roster of caregivers and in a small group of clients in a local area because it was mostly private pay out of pocket.

And so what's happened is because of the aging population, the baby boomer generation, there's 76 million people in that generation.

And at this point, 10,000 people a day turned 65 every single day for like the next 20 years, Matt.

So 10,000 Americans turned 65 every single day for the next 15 or 20 years. So they call it a silver tsunami.

It's a pot and they're going to have needs. This group is going to have needs, whether it's housing care, like what I'm talking about.

you know, even acute care, hospitals and rehabilitation centers and things like that. So these are massive numbers and what's happened is our industry, almost a little bit through COVID, got almost got like some props in a way where the legislators were able to see that the benefit of home care was keeping the cost down, keeping people out of acute care facilities and not everybody needs 24-7 home care.

So it's very rare for somebody to go from you know, perfectly healthy in retirement or their second career to we need a caregiver a little bit of care can prevent a lot of care because its fall prevention is a big one.

balance issues happen as we age. And so if we can prevent a fall and a broken hip, you can get a reasonable amount of help with your activities of daily living without needing total care in the home.

Matt Zaun 

So people can ease into this is what you're saying. They can slowly ease into the process of full-time care then.

ShaunToomey, Care Advantage, Inc. (Care Advantage)

They can't. So again, a lot of times, oftentimes, the way that we get a client or a client calls us with a need is, like I said, either there's a recognition that there's some decline happening.

But more almost as frequently or maybe even more frequently, it's more of an episode. A fall happens and mom or dad go into the hospital after stay there.

They get them back to health, but they're weakened. And when they go home, then they need more support at home.

so oftentimes, our company will go in, provide care, for a significant amount of care and scale it down until they kind of get back to a baseline.

So it can go both ways. You can start with a lot of care and scale it down to a reasonable amount, or you start slowly and build up to more as needed.

And sometimes we've had clients for five, six, seven years that have never increased their care. They get four or six hours a day, five days a week.

And it's helped them maintain their lifestyle for even longer than five or six years in some cases. Wow. So there's a lot of flexibility with the service.

Matt Zaun 

Wow. Sean, you give us a lot to think about. And I really appreciate it. I really appreciate your turn today.

appreciate this conversation. I heard things that I never heard before. I learned there's three big takeaways that I'm going to take from our conversation.

The first is I appreciate you mentioning notice sign. So for anyone listening that is going to be, you're going to be meeting with your parents.

Anytime soon Sean mentioned, notice the signs, unkept homes, stains in clothing, rotting food, medicine out on the table. That's not an order.

These are just some signs that something might be happening. And then the second, I appreciate you mentioning that there's support groups for this as well as the aging life care managers.

I think that's really good from a resource perspective. And then also I appreciate you mentioning that people are not alone in this.

You mentioned the Silver Tsunami and 76 million baby boomers, 10,000 people a day turning 65. The next 15 to 20 years, which is staggering.

People are not alone in this. I think you gave us a really good simplistic blueprint for people to turn to, to start the process of helping either themselves or their parents.

So thank you so much, Sean. If people want to get more information on what you do. or they want to inquire about the services your company provides.

ShaunToomey, Care Advantage, Inc. (Care Advantage)

Where's the best place they can go for that information? Well, I would say if you'd like to learn more and just kind of have an individual contact conversation about this, feel free to message me through LinkedIn.

My name is Sean Toomey, S-H-A-U-N-T-O-O-M-E-Y. And you can also go to our company's website, which is careadvantageinc.com.

Matt Zaun 

Perfect. I will include that in this show notes people could just click and get to it from there. But thanks again, Sean.

really appreciate your time today.

ShaunToomey, Care Advantage, Inc. (Care Advantage)

Man, my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.