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Elder Care
Consulting
Elder care
consultants help seniors and their families with the demands and
challenges of growing older. They help them deal with housing,
financial and legal issues.
This industry is relatively new, but many expect it to grow by leaps
and bounds in the near future. That's because in less than a decade,
the baby boomers will start to retire.
An elderly man falls in his home and breaks his
hip.
After a lengthy hospital stay and rehab, he is well enough to go home.
But he will need more care, and his wife is not able to give him that
type of care because she is too forgetful.
She won't admit this, and refuses any offers of help. The rest of the
family, meanwhile, is worried and unsure of what will happen next.
Enter Molly Shomer. She is the founder and president of an elder care
consulting service.
After assessing the needs and finances of the couple, she put together
a suitable and affordable plan that allowed the couple to get care at
home.
Only a small number of companies and individuals offer this kind of
service now. Information on this industry is limited.
"This industry is too new," says Shomer. "I'm not even sure I can call
it an industry yet."
But it may just be the next big business opportunity. That's because
the number of seniors will explode in the near future.
Advances in medical sciences have raised life expectancy rates to
record highs. More people are living longer, and there is no reason to
think this will change.
By 2010, the number of seniors in the U.S. is expected to rise sharply
as the baby boomers start to retire, a report from the Administration
of Aging says. Between 2010 and 2030, the number of people above the
age of 65 is expected to grow by 75 percent to over 69 million.
Between 2030 to 2050, the number of seniors is expected to go up by
another 14 percent. More than 79 million Americans will be seniors.
If these numbers and trends hold true, seniors will affect many areas
of public life and the economy.
They will certainly create a growing demand for products and services
that meet the special needs of older people. This includes elder care
consulting services to help seniors and their families sort through the
many legal, financial and legal questions that arise with old age.
Many companies and institutions have already responded to this need.
According a survey from the Society for Human Resource Management, one
quarter of surveyed companies offer elder care benefits. That's
important, because many of the relatives caring for the elderly are
also employed.
"Families will need support to fulfill their responsibilities, manage
the complexities of the service system, manage the emotional stress
related to elder care, learn to balance work and elder care
responsibilities, understand the legal issues related to powers of
attorney, estate planning, living wills, etc.," says Nora Spinks. She
runs an elder care consulting firm.
That support will come from family members, friends and elder care
consultants, she says.
Some consultants help seniors and their families with housing
questions. Others help seniors with their legal questions, or with
their finances.
Rob Scrivano recently helped a couple pay for the assisted living
arrangements that they needed but could not afford because of their low
income.
"So we figured out a way to rent a house and use that income to help
pay for assisted living that they otherwise couldn't afford to pay for
on their own," he says.
The complicated nature of his work keeps him busy. And that will not
change unless the government changes the rules. He expects the field to
boom. "The need for qualified people is just going to grow and grow and
grow," he says.
So what does it take to start your own business in this field?
Mary Moorhead is an elder care consultant. She writes a newspaper
column on elder care. She recommends a master's degree in social work,
psychology or geriatrics. A master's degree will eventually become an
industry standard, she says.
"And [you] really need to put in the time to get to know seniors and to
get to know their problems," she says.
Shomer says that anybody who is interested in this field should spend
two to five years working or volunteering in the elder care industry,
be it in a medical setting or a residential setting.
"You need to get your feet wet before you can sell your services as a
geriatric expert," she says. "And you need to know that you truly enjoy
working with the elderly."
Scrivano agrees. "If you are going into elder care, you better
understand the broad range of things that are going to assault you," he
says. "And if you are really going to deal with these people, you need
to be prepared [for] these issues when they come up."
Key issues include diseases like Alzheimer's, dementia and death. "You
better be able [to] be around people who are dying; who are seriously
ill; who don't have their faculties about them," he says.
"You better have an understanding of how the family works because you
are going to be around people who are filled with guilt, with remorse,
who are sad, who are angry because their loved ones are in a nursing
home."
You also have to have an understanding of legal issues, he says. "If
you are going [to] do this, you are going to have to do it in
conjunction with a decent attorney," he says.
You must also keep an eye on how the government approaches the larger
questions of health care and social security funding.
Governments may not have enough money to meet the needs of seniors,
since there are so many of them. Once seniors stop working, they will
pay far less in taxes.
At the same time, they will draw money out of the public purse through
their pensions. This will create financial imbalances, and may force
governments to spend less money on items that directly impact seniors
such as health care, housing and old age benefits.
Scrivano says he will go out of business the day the federal government
restricts who can get benefits.
"We are 20 years away from an amazing economic and political crisis
over this issue...of how we are going to pay for this," he says.
"That's the unknown in all of this."
Spinks raises the same point. "The big question is who will pay for the
consulting," says Spinks. "Employers? Family members? Elders?
Government? Service providers? Taxpayers?"
Another uncertainty is the question of whether government should
regulate an industry that may be ripe with fraud and scams.
Shomer says the answer should be no. Lillian Morgenthau is the founder
and president of Canada's Association for the Fifty-Plus (CARP). She
disagrees with Shomer. She says she wants government to take a look at
the elder care consulting industry.
"First of all, they should study the industry. And they should make
sure that whoever is in it is a licensed person who can actually be a
help, not a hindrance. They should be very aware of the consumers who
are part of this industry."
Not all seniors or their families will be able to afford elder care
consulting. And not all elder care consulting businesses will succeed,
even though the demographics favor this type of business.
Shomer says a lot of people see elder care as a quick way to get rich.
"So there will be a lot of people trying to come into it," she says.
"There will be a lot of people who will fail miserably, and there will
be some very bad products out there. It's like what's happening with
the Internet right now. You are going to have start-ups and failures."
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Net
Sites
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The Elder Care Team
An elder care consulting company
http://www.eldercareteam.com
ElderWeb
A resource and news site on elder care
http://www.elderweb.com/default.php3
American Association
of Retired Persons
Represents Americans over the age of 50
http://www.aarp.org/
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