Leslie Newlife

The Bottom Line: Assisted Living Costs

 

caringpeople

The national average for an assisted living facility in 2017 for a private, one-bedroom unit was $45,000 a year, but costs can be more than 50 percent higher in some states and a third lower in others. The costliest states for assisted living are Delaware: $72,000, Alaska $72,000, New Jersey: $70,000, Massachusetts: $67,000, and Rhode Island: $62,000. The least expensive states are Missouri: $32,000, Georgia: $34,000, South Carolina $34,000, Arkansas and North Dakota: $36,000.

Although no one wants to send mom or dad halfway across the country, a look at the finances may prove that less expensive assisted living will allow more money for plane tickets for visits. The question to ask is how often you visit now and how often you and your senior feel is appropriate for visits.

Other financial line items to look at are the costs of home care and transportation for seniors no longer able to drive. Assisted living facilities generally include assistance with housekeeping, personal care, and provide meals even if the unit contains a kitchen area. If your senior has to pay for rides to the doctor, house cleaning, grocery delivery, and other such needs, calculate the cost and include it in the equation.

Recreation and socialization needs vary widely. If your senior likes to shop, go to movies, dine with friends, attend clubs, how much will this cost from their present home? Many of these social and recreational activities are included in assisted living. What about public transportation? Is it easily reached from home or is the assisted living center closer to a bus line?

The critical question is which does the senior prefer: to live at home or move into an assisted living facility. Run the numbers so they will know which is more affordable — and how much of their assets they willing to spend on living where they choose.

It is impossible to put a price on happiness or on peace of mind. Both must be factored in when making such a drastic life decision.

Instagram Marketing 101: Is Your Picture Worth 1,000 Likes?

Instagram

Posting pictures of your product or service is easy, right? Nothing could be farther from the reality content marketers face when disseminating compelling, engaging, authentic visual media.  Instagram seems to have grown in popularity among marketers, and has maintained a strong hold within the top five most popular social networking sites.

So, what does it take to curate a strong Instagram account with images that truly reflect a company or brand? It takes insight, decisiveness, and a clear message.

Optimize Bio Content

A successful Instagram page requires more than beautiful images. The platform allows 150 characters for profile bio content. Overlooking this element mean missed connections with potential followers who misunderstand your brand.  As a matter of fact, after registering your account/username and selecting a profile image, your next step should be crafting a direct, concise bio. Consider encouraging engagement with a branded hashtag or including a CTA to your website. Bonus pro-tip: Use a link shortener such as Google to save valuable content space.

Know Your Audience

This should go without saying, but it is worth repeating as you embark on your visual media journey. Understanding your audience when communicating predominantly through images is perhaps more important than ever. Your subject matter, composition, color choices, filters, and accompanying text must all speak to audience expectations and needs. Your images should not simply mirror your product or service. Instead, aim to tell a story, showcasing your brand in action, in a way that reflects your audience’s lifestyle.

High-Quality Images

Image quality considers a variety of elements, including camera capability, image clarity, composition, gradation, and light/color balance. In a sea of images, your photos need to exhibit pristine attention to detail in order to stand out. Arrange your products artfully with bold contrast, demonstrate action in professional service images. Familiarize yourself with Instagram image resolution settings, and don’t be afraid to explore filters and editing tools.

Contests

Instagram recommends photo contests as “a great way to increase visibility of your brand” on the platform. Contests are an engaging strategy to disseminate brand awareness and acquire audience loyalty—especially when prizes are involved.

Engage

Do not simply post your image and step back from the community. Be a part of the community. Engage with a respond to your audience. Ask questions to learn more about your followers and keep discussions growing. Use relevant hashtags to encourage further connectivity and conversation. Make your audience feel appreciated, and they will keep coming back to see more.

Can GPS Tracking Device Help A Senior in Your Life?

GPSTracker

When seniors have a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, the world is a scary place. However, ‘scary’ is a mild term compared to the terror of having a loved one lost because of wandering. The worry, grief, and fear takes hold of the caregiver or family. The person lost is in a state of confusion, and panic because of not being in a familiar area, and they can’t find their way home. Time, cost, and concern weighs heavily on the local law enforcement and those searching for the victim. It’s not an easy time for anyone, but there is a helpful solution.

GPS Tracking Device

Tracking devices for seniors help take the guess-work out of finding those who wander. It’s due to pinpointing the area and direction where the senior meandered while wearing the device in a bracelet, necklace, or key ring. In The Daily Mail, a local newspaper in London, the law enforcement are hoping for more utilization of tracking devices because of 44,000 who go missing each year, a large number being ‘wander walkers’.

Research performed by AARP show the numbers for senior caregivers will reach to 117 million by 2020 in America.

By 2020, 117 million Americans are expected to need assistance of some kind, yet the overall number of unpaid caregivers is only expected to reach 45 million.

Is there Opposition?

Unfortunately, the concerns pose some opposition believing the tool is taking away human rights. Therefore, the following suggestion helps to alleviate those concerns:

  • Each resident and family must know the drawbacks as well as the benefits to owning the device.
  • The issuing of these devices goes only by a case-by-case basis to ensure of no misunderstandings.

When there is an opportunity to help someone as fast as possible, to alleviate fear, concern, and worry, and to help in the way of time, and cost, a tracking device is one benefit for everyone involved.

Find help caring for Alzheimer’s patients at NewLifeStyles.com.

Senior Living Marketing: Ask Interesting Questions, Get Interesting Promotional Material (Part 2)

Welcome back to the second half of our two-part article on how to get high quality marketing material for your senior living community simply by asking the seniors. Rather than promoting what you think will be popular, by talking to the current members of your community and asking interesting questions, you can get a variety of interesting and praise-filled answers that will be much more persuasive promotional copy than simply highlighting the menu again. Last time we talked about showing a sense of adventure and putting the spotlight on favorite amenities. Join us as we pick up where we left off with welcoming family topics.

Provide A Warm Family Welcome

One of the biggest fears for both seniors and their loving relatives is that an assisted living facility will create distance. They have a hard time imagining where they’ll meet with their parents or grandparents and how enjoyable visits can be when hosted in your venue. While adults are content to sit and talk anywhere well-lit and comfy, families often worry about how child-friendly a facility will be for visiting grandchildren. To answer all of these questions, ask around for the answer to:

What do grandchildren like to do when they come visit?

You may get a dozen different answers to this question and all of them will be unique and valuable illustrations of family visits and child-friendly activities. Your seniors will enjoy the opportunity to talk about their grandchildren and the stories they tell will serve as both encouragement and comfort to new residents who want visits with younger relatives to be enjoyable and welcoming.

Celebrate Strong Friendships

Many seniors experience a social renaissance when they join an assisted living community because they are suddenly surrounded by many other people their own age. While sharing interests and building friendships can happen anywhere from quiet card games to walks in the garden, you can show off your fantastic socializing opportunities by answering the simple question:

Where do residents socialize the most?

The stories and answers that this question will inspire will be a combination of your best locations and personal preferences that will highlight the social life of your senior community. Whether you have a beautiful grove of trees, an enchanting fire pit for evening gatherings, or even a fantastic games room, the personal accounts of resident’s favorite social activities are sure to create engaging material for your promotional needs.

Seniors and families today want to hear real stories about how your facility handles everything from family visits to self-enrichment. Whatever is special or most enjoyed about your senior living community, ask your residents and staff to share their side of things with future members to create a truly personalized marketing campaign.

For more interesting tips on promoting your senior living community or services, contact us today! See part one!

The Stigma of Hospice Care: 3 Myths Debunked

Myths & Facts

When my mom entered hospice care, I thought I knew what to expect. I thought hospice would be a terrible place.  I had images of dark narrow halls with flickering lights and wart faced nurses who had been kicked out of hospitals for being too brutal.  I could not have been more wrong.  I learned so much about hospice care from my experience and my hope is that my understanding can be passed on.  The following list will help to demystify hospice care and address some common concerns.

Myth #1: Hospice is a bad place where people go to die.

First of all, Hospice is not a place.  Hospice is a type of care that people receive when they are in their last days.  The care providers are there to make things as easy as possible and they not only serve the patien tbut the family as well.  Hospice care is all around attention for everyone involved.

Myth # 2: If I accept hospice care (for myself or a family member) that means that I am giving up hope.

Try not to think of it as giving up hope.  Instead, think of it as a shift in thinking.  Hospice care is about comfort and about giving quality care in a person’s end days.  Our hope is that a patient and their family are as comfortable as possible.

Myth # 3: Hospice nurses are mean, and have been broken down by being surrounded by death.

A hospice nurse cannot be assigned to that job on a whim.  They have a special gifting which allows them to be incredibly empathetic in a hard situation.  They also have special training and are often giving extensive debriefing after each situation in order to assure great care for all involved.  This includes the patients, their families and the nurses themselves.

When people hear the word hospice, they immediately go running for the hills.  Hospice means death and death is scary.  Yes, death is sad,but sad does not necessarily have to equal scary.  With the right care,the right people, and the right conversations, death can be a beautiful transition.  It is the stigma behind death that has led to the stigma behind hospice.  Hospice is a very misunderstood form of care.  We hope this blog has helped to further eliminate some of that stigma.  For more information, please contact us.

Senior Living Marketing: Ask Interesting Questions, Get Interesting Promotional Material (Part 1)

Senior living businesses across the country are looking for new ways to spice up their marketing campaigns to appeal to modern seniors and their adult family members. Whether you’re printing brochures, writing inbound marketing articles, or shooting promotional video the key is to engage your audience with answers to questions you know they’re asking. That said, when every facility you’re competing with is doing the same series of posts on floor plans and menus, you can show where your community shines by answering questions your audience hasn’t thought to ask yet but will love the answers to. By running your campaign like a game of Table Topics, you have a wonderful opportunity to bring out the best of your facility, staff, activities, and dynamic senior population with a few simple question-based techniques.

Display Your Sense of Adventure

A lot of seniors who join an assisted living community aren’t done being independent and adventurous, which is why you host the occasional excursion and field trip to the delight of everyone involved. Rather than simply listing an itinerary, tell a story answering the question:

“Tell us about the most adventurous excursion that happened this year.”

Do you go on boating trips, bungee jumping, or zip-line excursions? Even an exciting game of mini-golf is a worthy topic if your residents enjoyed themselves a great deal. Instead of a classic promotional description, ask your residents and staff to give their personal stories of the experiences and print them as told or separated into the best clips. Modern consumers are looking for honesty and a certain genuine quality to promotional material and will delight in hearing the personal tales of elderly adventure that they or their older relatives could enjoy if they chose to join your community.

Highlight The Community’s Favorite Amenities

Amenities, those wonderful little extras that make a retirement community so enjoyable, are among your best selling points. Of course, listing them on an itinerary is less than ideally promotional. If you really want to give future residents a chance to understand just how relaxing and fun your amenities can be, ask your current seniors!

“What’s your favorite thing to do here in the community?”

This is likely where you’re going to get the widest variety of answers because everyone likes something different about their retirement community. Some will enthusiastically describe the projects they’ve worked on in the arts and crafts room, some will be adore the opportunity to swim every day, and of course, and some will mention how much they enjoy the variety of games they can play with friends in the clubhouse. Then, of course, there will always be one or two who claim their favorite dessert as an amenity all it’s own.

The seniors in your retirement community are your best asset when it comes to marketing because they’re intimately familihttp://blog/senior-living-marketing-ask-interesting-questions-get-interesting-promotional-material-part-2ar with all the best parts of being one of your residents. But, of course, this is only the first half of our two-part article on how to get fantastic marketing material by talking to the seniors around you. For the rest, stay tuned for part two!

The Wisdom of Seniors: Preserving Family Stories for Future Generations

 

Senior and Caregiver Reviewing pictures

From earliest childhood, many of us remember sitting at the knee of a parent or grandparent hearing about their adventures and life lessons. In fact, it is often those lessons learned and the wisdom shared that strengthens families and carries them through difficult times, generation after generation. There is no better way to preserve family legacy and reinforce the bond between seniors and their children and grandchildren than spending time together talking, listening and sharing.

Even more important, what better way to make older relatives feel loved and appreciated than letting them know that their wisdom will be passed down long after they are gone. Sharing family history doesn’t just benefit the recipients of a grandparent’s wisdom. There is scientific evidence that reminiscing is also good for the seniors telling their stories.

In The Power of Telling Family Stories, experts say that for seniors, sharing family history not only “improves cognition, lessens depression, and improves behavioral functioning,” but also boosts self-esteem and lessens stress. It may also help older relatives recognize the value and importance of their lives in fresh new ways.

The best ways to ensure that family stories are shared and passed down is to permanently capture them in video, audio, or print.

Some tips to get started in recording your family history:

  • Gather, label and scrapbook family photos
  • Record simple videos or audio on your phone or other easy to use & carry equipment
  • Record favorite recipes
  • View old home movies making notes of who is included, a time frame & where it was shot

There are companies like StoryWorth and others that take a family’s written recollections and binds them into beautiful keepsakes. Other companies like Cider Spoon Stories that interview seniors and write a book based on the history. And the nonprofit Story Corps helps anyone set up interviews with loved ones – in person or through an app -that will be preserved and housed in the Library of Congress.

At the end of the day, it is vitally important for all of us to feel like our lives matter. For seniors, it is also a comfort knowing that the wisdom they’ve shared will help guide their family long after they are gone. In fact, what more in life is there than knowing your loved ones will always remember and value your life well lived. What a wonderful activity to do with the senior in your life, as you visit them in a community, or even as you care for them at home.

More Tips to Retain Your Caregivers

Cargiverhelping

You need to have caregivers that you can trust so that you can have a successful home health care, or any type of senior care business. Your caregivers need to work hard so that they keep your customers happy with their services. Longevity speaks volumes about a business!

It can be hard to find good caregivers. However, once you do find them, it is just as important to make sure that they stay. Here are some more tips to retain your best caregivers.

  • People don’t leave jobs, they leave management. For this reason, you have to make sure that you are not the problem. Go above and beyond to treat your caregivers well so that they want to stay. Be there for them during difficult times. Help them when they are down. If there is a problem with their work, discuss it right away so that they can make amends.
  • Be approachable. If you want to keep your employees, it is important that they know that they can talk to you about any problems. If not, they will fester until they boil over and your caregiver decides to quit. Whenever someone has a problem that needs to be discussed, be there for him or her. They will appreciate it.
  • Divide up some of the unwanted jobs. In the senior care field, there are good jobs and there are ones that no one really wants to do. If you are constantly giving someone the bad jobs, they won’t want to continue to work for you. Instead, if you make everyone do a shift that no one wants, it will balance out the good and the bad.
  • Always, always, always reward, recognize, and appreciate your caregivers. People want to feel appreciated. It is true that the little things really do matter and add up. Even if you can’t afford to pay much at the beginning, raises and gifts that show you care go a long way to happy employees.

When you find the right caregivers, you should do everything that you can to be a good and fair manager. Divide up the jobs that no one wants to do so one person is not stuck hating the job. Make sure that you are available if someone needs to talk. Make continuing education a priority and reward those that are learning new skills!

Your business is only as good as your employees so work hard to make them the best that they can be.

Tips On Dealing With People Who Have Dementia

Can you imagine what it’s like to not recognize your children? What if everyone was a complete stranger? On top of that, you only understand every third or fourth word spoken to you. Sadly, this is reality for many dementia patients. What can we do to help?

First, accept that this is their reality, and you can’t change it. Trying to make them remember doesn’t work, and may only add to their frustration. Avoid telling them to try to remember, or to think about it.

A person who has dementia  may believe that they are younger than they are/or have moments of living in the past. For instance, a woman may give you her maiden name, even if she hasn’t used that name for sixty years. She may mention her parents as though they are living. Do not feel the need to correct her. This will cause your loved one unnecessary grief.

When caring for someone who has dementia, always be aware of your body language. Move slowly, smile, and speak softly. This can put them at ease, ensuring they do not see you as a threat. Approach them from the front, taking care not to startle. Use hand motions while explaining what you are about to do, like pretending to take a bite when you ask if they are ready to eat.

How should you handle it if your loved one becomes upset with you, or even belligerent? After ensuring their safety, walk away, giving them time to calm down. They may just need a few moments alone. Then try again, taking a new approach. Do not aim for perfection. For instance, if they’ve put their shirt on backwards, and do not want to turn it around, it’s ok. If they don’t want to brush their hair for one day, it isn’t going to hurt them.

When caring for someone with dementia, prioritizing is a must. Their safety and happiness come first. Have patience, and let them lead when you can. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Remember that you can make their day better, and that is the goal.

There are many Alzheimer’s support groups available for help through out the country. Take advantage of all of the resources. Remeber that help is available at home, during the day or for short term stays at many Memory Care Communities.

Back to the Basics – How to Market to People in Retirement

I have spent most of my career helping, assisting, and selling to people who are between the ages of 65-100. If you are marketing or trying to market to this audience, you may have already realized that it is quite different than what you may have expected. Many people would rather market towards a younger generation, but I have marketed to all ages and have found much success in the retirement communities. Here are some helpful tips that I have learned while working.

1. Keep your message simple. This is not because people who are older are less intelligent, the truth couldn’t be further from that actually. There are two parts as to why you must keep your message simple. First we communicate differently now than most older people are used to. Just like we may not understand our younger generations music, they may not be familiar with the same words, concepts, or ideas as we are. The other reason is attention span. As we get older our attention is so divided that to give someone our full and complete attention is an honor. Use the time you have wisely and do your best to communicate clearly.

2. Find out how your target audience communicates. Not every community you market to will have the same popular means of communications. Some places may rely on the internet maybe even a local website, while others may choose not to market online. Types of popular communication could include, local newspapers or guides, homeowners associations, golf or other recreational sports/county club newsletters, recreational center billboards, or even simply direct maillings. Study your target audience in your area and find the best way to reach them so that they will listen to you.

3. Seek as many referrals as possible. I cannot stress this point enough.You can a huge advantage by allowing word of mouth to be a main source of marketing. I once was able to reach over 5,000 customers because I did a quality service for a single member of a gated senior community. Older generations grew up sticking together and relying on one another and if they find a product or service that they agree with they will share it with all of their friends. If possible give discounts, coupons, or freebies to clients who bring you referrals.

4. Money isn’t always an objection. Sometimes price is not what you need to worry about. Some of your clients have worked their entire lives and are doing quite well financially. Most of the millionaires I have met are in wheelchairs. Don’t make money seem like a deal breaker if they haven’t shown you any sign of that being an issue. Find out what your clients real objections are. It could be comfort, ease of operation, trust, physical appearance, or maybe even nothing at all. Don’t create a problem if there isn’t one and make sure to deal with any objections that come to the surface.