How to Hold Family Meetings and Why You Should Hold Them Often

By Andy Niska | January 27, 2017 |

Elder Care in Medical Lake WA

If you’ve never held a family meeting to discuss your elderly loved one’s care needs and her care plan, it might be time for you to look into holding them often.

Make Connections However You Can

Many people fear that holding frequent family meetings about your elderly loved one’s care means that everyone has to be there, face-to-face, in order to get the meeting underway. The reality is that with the technology formats available today, you can set up regular family meetings with anyone you need to no matter where they are in the world. Speaker phones, video conferencing, or even a Facebook group that’s set to private can all work for your meeting.

What to Discuss

Once you’ve got your meeting set up, you might start to worry about what you should talk about. It’s important to let other family members know about everything that you’re dealing with. If you’re overwhelmed and need some extra help, they need to know about it. They can have the opportunity to step up and offer their assistance or you might need to let them know you’re planning to hire an elder care provider. Medical updates, daily adventures, funny stories, and caregiving tasks that you’re having to manage are all some of the topics you might discuss.

Holding them Often Keeps Everyone Involved

You might think that it’s better to hold monthly or even quarterly meetings with your entire family about your elderly loved one’s caregiving issues. For some families, this might actually work. But so much can change over the span of three months, or even one month. Holding meetings more frequently ensures that all of the people who need to know what is going on with your elderly loved one consistently have that information.

Follow up Afterward

Once the meeting is over, follow up with everyone. This is especially important if there were some big decisions that you had to discuss or there were changes that are being made to your loved one’s care plan. This might happen through email, a private Facebook group, or even through a newsletter that you physically mail to everyone. But following up in writing is the important part.

Keeping everyone in the family engaged and on the same page with your elderly loved one’s care ensures that no one feels left out.

If you or an aging loved one are considering elder care in Medical Lake, WA, please contact the friendly staff at Love at Home Senior Care, today. Call (509) 204-4088

Author
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Andy Niska

Owner at Love In Home Senior Care

Andy has over 20+ years experience in the medical community and has a true compassion for seniors. With a degree in Health Care Administration, he developed a background in a variety of health care services that only comes from first hand experience. While working as a manager of a large clinic and as an account executive for medical suppliers. Andy has built valuable relationships with the medical community.

His role in Love In Home Senior Care is to educate people on what care choice is the best fit for the senior and their family while attempting to make this decision as stress-free as possible for everyone involved.

This decision making process should be smooth and stress free for everyone, including all family members and their loved ones. Having access to people with experience (like the team at Love In Home Senior Care) to assist you along the way can help this process. With an extensive background in health care, Andy has the experience needed to guide and direct your loved one to the choice that is the best fit.