Saratoga Publications: Table Of Contents & Abstracts

Click on any underlined chapter title—or scroll down—to see the abstract for that chapter.
	About The Author Preface: My Injury Wrote This Book for You, Dedications Acknowledgments, Statement of Lack of Gender Bias	7 9 16
Introduction		17
	Why This Reference is Important to You: Your Freedom and Control Definitions of Titles and Terms Used in This Reference Two Types of Assistance Providers: Unpaid caregivers, daycare and respite providers, and volunteers Paid aides and personal assistants (PAs) How to Use This Reference Your Quick Start Guide: Five Topics to Get You Going Today!	19 23 29 33 43
Part I Identifying Your Options for Assistance		49
1 2 3 4	Beyond Family Caregivers: Options and Settings for Finding Outside Assistance Volunteer Help: Don’t Wear Out Your Friendships Live-In Aides, and Your Other Residence Options Settings Where You Use Help	51 77 93 105
Part II Three Ten-Step Plans for Getting the Help You Need		121
5 6 7	Ten Steps to Getting All or Some of Your Help from Family Caregivers Ten Steps to Getting All or Some of Your Help from Agency-Employed Aides Ten Steps to Getting All or Some of Your Help from Personally Employed Aides	123 153 167
Part III More Topics on Getting the Help You Need		205
8 9 10	Where and How to Advertise for Your Own PAs Initial Training and Ongoing Management of Aides and PAs Recognizing and Resolving Your PA Problems, or Parting Ways	207 231 241
Part IV Taking Control of Your Help Needs		265
11 12 13 14	When It Is, and Is Not, Okay to Ask for Help Getting It Done—Your Way Defining and Describing Your Help Needs Say It, Ask for It, and Act—Assertively!	267 285 293 309
Part V Strategies for Your Being A Good Manager		325
15 16 17 18	Your Qualities and Strategies as a Good PA Manager Dividing Your Needs, and Assigning Work Shifts, Among Several PAs Setting Up Your Efficient Work Areas, and Maintaining Adequate Supplies Your Personal Coping with, and Reacting to, PA Failures	327 341 361 371
Part VI The Costs of Your Paid Help		395
19 20 21	Your Costs of Recruiting, Training, and Keeping PAs Happy Paying Your Salaries: Cash, Non-cash, or Both U.S. Tax Obligations, Deductions, and Publications for PA Employers	397 403 427
Part VII “I Understand How You Feel” —Concerns Heard from You, as a Recipient, Family Caregiver, or Paid Provider		437
22 23 24 25	A Bill of Rights for You, as a Help Recipient, Caregiver, or Paid Provider Your Personal Concerns, as a Help Recipient Your Personal Concerns, as a Family Caregiver Your Personal Concerns, as a Paid Help Provider, plus Ten Reasons Why PAs Quit Their Jobs, and Ten Reasons Why PAs Are Fired	441 445 449 453
Part VIII Parting Advice for You		461
26 27 28 29	When You or Your Help Provider Has—or Might Have—AIDS Medical Monitoring Services—Your Push-Button Lifesaver Your Discretion, Privacy, and Confidentiality Your Educational Role and Objective: To Direct Some; To Teach, Instruct, and Train Most; and To Educate a Select Few	463 467 471 475
Appendices		477
	MiCASSA, Olmstead, and ADAPT—Your Medicaid Rights and Funding for PAs Selected Resource Bibliography Your Advice Is Requested and Please Register for Your Free Newsletter How to Order Additional Copies of This Reference	479 483 487 489
Index		491
Your Author		508
Book Chapter Abstracts Part I Identifying Your Options for Assistance The chapters in Part I introduce you to types, sources, and settings for help providers that are typically available outside of the home setting. The options and settings for finding paid providers will be of as much interest to family caregivers who need relief or replacement as they will be to help recipients. Using volunteer help in appropriate ways from valid sources is essential, however when it is used inappropriately it can quickly kill long-standing friendships. Live-in aides can actually be a free source of very dependable help, and another chapter tells you how that works. The last chapter on settings provides tips on using providers anywhere outside the home, from day trips within the community to residence on a college campus.
1	Beyond Family Caregivers: Options and Settings for Finding Outside Assistance Your family caregivers might need relief or replacement help to relieve their chronic fatigue. You—and this book—can help them by knowing the options for finding the additional assistance you need: at your home (agency-employed aides or personally employed PAs), within the community (respite day care or weekend relief), or at a community residence facility (independent or assisted living center, or nursing home).
2	Volunteer Help: Don’t Wear Out Your Friendships On one hand, your use of help from volunteers is probably essential to your everyday independence. On the other hand, you can easily see when your request for a favor is no longer welcome, or when some of your more extensive needs are exceeding their volunteer intentions. When, where, and from whom is it okay to ask for favors; when is it not; and when does US federal law actually require volunteers to help you?
3	Live-In Aides, and Your Other Residence Options Live-in aides can benefit your safety, security, and budget—in sharp contrast, they can also threaten your safety, steal your possessions, and become a live-in nightmare. You will find out how live ins can provide you with free help, and how to evict them when their help is no longer wanted. For aides that live nearby, those who live closest to you often will be the most reliable, dependable, and punctual. Residence options are outlined to give you ideas about increasing the odds that your PA will be at your door at 6 o’clock sharp tomorrow morning.
4	Settings Where You Use Help You are familiar with using help providers at home, however your daily lifestyle probably brings you to many additional places. Learn how to use help for community meetings, appointments, and errands; for overnight business travel or vacations; and at college campuses. Special strategies are also outlined for making sure that the staff at hospitals, rehab centers, and residential living facilities provide you with adequate help in ways that accommodate your needs—and not only theirs.
Part II Three Ten-Step Plans for Getting the Help You Need Part II is the nucleus of this reference. These three ten-step plans address the three primary sources for help providers with a specialized game plan for pursuing each one. Most recipients combine at least two sources to accommodate their variety of needs.
5 6 7	Ten Steps to Getting All or Some of Your Help from Family Caregivers Ten Steps to Getting All or Some of Your Help from Agency-Employed Aides Ten Steps to Getting All or Some of Your Help from Personally Employed Aides Okay, you have read through these preparatory topics and now you are ready to tackle the recurring RISHTMP cycle—recruiting, interviewing, screening, hiring, training, managing, and parting ways with help providers. There are three primary sources for providers: family caregivers, agency-employed aides, and personally employed aides or personal assistants (PAs). Here, you will find three original ten-step procedures for getting help from each source. Introducing each chapter are strategies and comments from experiences of both your author and scores of help recipients and providers. Special attention is warranted for the valuable advisories to family caregivers on how careful planning can minimize their chances for overwork, burnout, and depression.
Part III More Topics on Getting the Help You Need The chapters of Part III are supplements to the three ten-step plans of Part II. While some details apply to all three of the provider sources, most apply to recruiting, training, managing, resolving problems, and parting ways with personally employed aides or PAs (personal assistants).
8	Where and How to Advertise for Your Own Personal Assistants (PAs) In order to hire the best PAs, you will want to attract a maximum number of the best applicants. This chapter details the strategies of professional, commercial advertising firms and applies them to where and how to attract desirable PA applicants. Included are the five primary parts of any successful advertisement; special ways to make your PA ad, poster, or Internet notice attract attention; and the best places to advertise for aides in a typical community.
9	Initial Training and Ongoing Management of Aides and PAs Once you have recruited and hired quality PAs, training them is next. Agency and personally employed aides both require training. This chapter is packed with ways to clone the skills and good habits of your current, best aides into the new ones. You will learn how to train new PAs by using a three-step procedure that uses your current PAs, and saves you time and energy. You will also find an efficient, three-way teaching method of citing what help you need, along with how you would like to receive the help, and why your preferences are important. This method, when coupled with routinely expressed appreciation, will significantly accelerate the learning curve for your PAs and help you to keep them longer.
10	Recognizing and Resolving Your PA Problems, or Parting Ways Once you have hired and trained your PAs, you will want to keep them as long as possible. Tips in this chapter will help you recognize problems early, and resolve them quickly, in order to prevent unnecessary aide resignations. When problems cannot be remedied, more tips will help you to recognize when PAs are ready to resign often before the PAs, themselves, are aware of it. You will know why, how, and when (in a work shift) PAs typically resign, so you can be best prepared to appropriately react and then smoothly replace them. In the rare instance when you must fire an aide, you will know how to deliver the news while safeguarding yourself and possessions against repercussions.
Part IV Taking Control of Your Help Needs This part provides you with strategies for identifying, listing, and conveying to providers your needs for help. With these chapters, you begin by evaluating whether all the initially identified help needs would be appropriate for requesting assistance from providers. Next is a chapter of assurance that your preferences in what, when, and how you want help provided are, indeed, very important—regardless of the feedback you might occasionally receive from angry providers. With that foundation in place, it’s time to define your final list of needs and preferences, and then be ready to describe them to PAs. The last section addresses the clear, direct, assertive way you should use for communicating with aides in order to increase the chances that your needs are understood and fulfilled.
11	When It Is, and Is Not, Okay to Ask for Help If you have a wide variety of needs for help, you request many tasks each day. Your requests are usually granted, until you get “that look” from a PA that says you have stepped over the line and asked for something that does not feel right. Where is that fine line that separates what is and is not okay? This chapter proposes three types of inappropriate requests, and a list of negative consequences of your making them. There are also four sets of factors to help you decide when it is, and is not, okay to make a request.
12	Getting It Done—Your Way You have preferences in the what, how, when, and why for the ways that you receive help. Be assured about how important these are, and why they are important. Also be aware of strategies for getting the help you need—provided your way.
13	Defining and Describing Your Help Needs Your clear list and schedule of needs are as important to you and PAs as a set of blueprints is to an architect and construction crew. In addition to a list of needs, sometimes it is helpful to create a job description that includes the nature of the work, your expectations of the qualifications and qualities of aides, and comments about the salary. A sample list and schedule of needs plus a job description are illustrated. In addition, right now, could you ad lib a short, 30-second and a more detailed, 5-minute description of your PA job and work routine? If you advertise the job and speak with PA applicants, you will be narrating both versions, for different reasons, hundreds of times over the next few years. Your first impression to applicants should be of someone who is reasonably organized, intelligent, and clear thinking. Like most of us, you might want to outline and then rehearse your descriptions once or twice before your phone rings with that first inquiry.
14	Say It, Ask for It, and Act—Assertively! Perhaps you have heard complaints from PAs that you are making too many demands. Others might tell you it is not what you are requesting, but how you are making requests that irritates your helpers. Here is a chapter that should clarify what PAs are trying to tell you. It will advise you how to get what you want by using clear, direct, and assertive communication and behavior, while avoiding passive, aggressive, and passive-aggressive habits.
Part V Strategies for Your Being A Good Manager The first chapter provides you with common sense “how to” details on being the first-class PA manager for whom quality aides want to work. The next discusses the strategy and advantages of dividing your needs among several PAs. Here, you will find strategies on deciding how many part timers to employ, and then how to have PAs self-assign their work shifts during monthly staff meetings. Next, if you want PAs to work efficiently, you must provide an efficient work area with sufficient supplies and this chapter tells you how. Finally, the help providers upon whom you are so dependent are also the people who routinely fail to satisfy their commitments to you. The most common crisis situations are listed with strategies that you can use for coping, reacting, and surviving.
15	Your Qualities and Strategies as a Good PA Manager You will find guidelines about how to be an in-charge manager who is also caring and appreciative—a person for whom help providers want to work extra hours. You will learn why routinely expressing appreciation is essential to keeping longer the quality PAs, as well as how, when, and how often to most effectively express it.’
16	Dividing Your Needs, and Assigning Work Shifts, Among Several PAs It costs no more to employ several part-time aides than just one, for the same total of hours. Over a dozen listed advantages include having instant backups and subs when a scheduled aide suddenly cannot work or quits, making the job more attractive to applicants, and avoiding the chance of abuse or unfair advantage that a one-and-only PA can exert over you. This is one of the most important strategies for managing help providers.
17	Setting Up Your Efficient Work Areas, and Maintaining Adequate Supplies Your PAs prefer and require work areas that are reasonably clean, efficiently organized, and adequately supplied. Here are strategies for your setting up, stocking, and maintaining favorable work areas, while staying on top of supply inventories.
18	Your Personal Coping with, and Reacting to, PA Failures It is a fact that the people upon whom you are most dependent are those who too often fail to satisfy their commitments to you. They might fail to show up for a morning work shift, while you lie in bed wondering how to summon the help you need to get up. At the time you hire them, other PAs might vow a minimum employment commitment of nine months, and then quit three weeks later to a higher paying job. Or, perhaps you discover that your most trusted aide has been stealing your medications, petty cash, or girl friend. This chapter advises you about how to constructively react in order to survive the current situation while reducing the chance for future ones.
Part VI The Costs of Your Paid Help The bottom line of the first chapter is to help you realize the costs of hiring PAs and then keeping them happy. Next, you will find details about the cash, non-cash, and combination ways of paying PAs, and which will work best for you. The third topic is about your tax obligations and how to keep your tax bill as low as is legally possible. The strength of these chapters is helping you to calculate the costs, keep financial records, and realize the basics about tax obligations. Regrettably, there are few details about potential funding sources, because there are currently not many sources to list.
19	Your Costs of Recruiting, Training, and Keeping PAs Happy This chapter begins by listing and discussing what it costs you—in time and money—to advertise, interview, screen, and hire each new personally employed aide. A comparison is next presented between the typical costs of using agency-employed aides and employing your own. Based on this comparison, you are advised about the total annual savings of employing your own PAs over paying for agency aides from your pocket. Finally, you will again be reminded that the most effective, powerful incentive you can use to keep your providers happy costs you nothing—it is simply your routine expression of appreciation for the help your PAs provide.
20	Paying Your Salaries: Cash, Non-cash, or Both There are three types of salary commonly used for paying help providers. This chapter discusses when to use a straight cash salary; a non-cash salary of live-in space, services, or goods; or a cash and non-cash combination. If you choose the cash option, you are shown a step-by-step bookkeeping system for calculating and recording paycheck amounts. In the US, after you have paid salaries, you are required to file quarterly and year-end reports to various agencies and pay employment taxes. You are coached on where to find the up-to-date requirements regarding these responsibilities, or on how to use a local accountant to research or routinely fulfill them for you.
21	U.S. Tax Obligations, Deductions, and Publications for PA Employers Two approaches could be taken here. In one, I could provide a detailed listing of obligations, which forms to file, the calendar deadlines for each filing, and the current criteria used for calculating taxes. However, some of this printed data would be outdated and useless by the time you read it. Instead, this chapter introduces these obligations and then identifies the sources for you to use in getting criteria that is certain to be up to date.
Part VII “I Understand How You Feel”—Concerns Heard from You, as a Recipient, Family Caregiver, or Paid Provider This section is about increasing understanding, communication, and respect among help recipients, family caregivers, and paid providers. Therapists tell us that the most basic, two-fold need that people have in any relationship is the desire to be heard and understood. Here is an anthology of concerns for each of the three parties, so each person can be better understood by the others while also gaining a fresh viewpoint on his or her own realities. To supplement these lists, I have published these concerns, along with needs and typical remedies, in a separate publication.
22	A Bill of Rights for You, as a Help Recipient, Caregiver, or Paid Provider You and your help providers each have personal rights. The strongest and longest-lasting recipient-provider relationships exist when each party respects the rights of the other. As a PA manager, you are wise to work in harmony with the people who help you. Relationships can be understanding, respectful, and harmonious when each person reviews the lists of his colleagues, and then reads his own list to better understand him or herself.
23	Your Personal Concerns, as a Help Recipient Most of this reference book provides details so that you can better understand others and be able to manage the help they provide you. However, what about you and your concerns? Yours are equally important, and usually only someone else with a disability can truly understand them. It would be very helpful for the family caregivers and paid providers who interact with you to better understand how you feel about your abilities and inabilities, your being dependent on assistance from others, your having to ask for that assistance, and the feedback that you feel when asking them for help. This chapter hears you, and lists many of your concerns so both you and others can better understand them.
24	Your Personal Concerns, as a Family Caregiver When a family member experiences a disability that requires help, some other family members often become caregivers. These selfless people typically abandon their own needs to provide whatever assistance the recipient requires, whenever it is needed. However, due to their forfeiture of personal needs, these caregivers soon become overworked, chronically tired, and depressed. Few people fully understand their concerns or needs, however this chapter makes an attempt. Its extensive listing of concerns helps caregivers better understand themselves, and be better understood by others.
25	Your Personal Concerns, as a Paid Help Provider, plus Ten Reasons Why PAs Quit Their Jobs, and Ten Reasons Why PAs Are Fired Your paid profession is to provide personal help to others. Whether help recipients are in a good mood or not, you have promised to fulfill their personal needs—and to attempt doing so with a smile. You provide help to the tasks that the recipient cannot do, that the family caregiver is too tired to do, and that your supervisor refuses to do. How do you maintain your desire for this tiring, day-after-day work while too often receiving mostly complaints about your performance? This chapter advises you, as well as those whom you serve and your supervisors, about what situations typically become so intolerable that you must resign. Also, it advises you about what negative habits you should avoid in order to keep a job you like.
Part VIII Parting Advice for You This closing part comes straight from your author. If you had been learning management skills by working with me in one-to-one counseling or in one of my 16-week formal courses, these are some of the topics that typically surface in the final few minutes.
26	When You or Your Help Provider Has—Or Might Have—AIDS This chapter does not describe how the HIV virus is contracted or what precautions to take. Instead, it addresses the philosophical and ethical question about whether either a help recipient or provider who is HIV positive is required to inform the other. We can assume the usually negative consequences when one party does inform the other, and this discussion is centered around opinions about when disclosure is necessary and when it is not. The discussion is based around the premise that every one of us probably has a relative or friend who is HIV positive, regardless of whether we are aware of it.
27	Medical Monitoring Services—Your Push-Button Lifesaver There is a growing population of people with disabilities who attempt to live at home alone, but who would be wise to have a live-in aide or a medical monitoring system. These folks might live with the risk of falling and urgently needing help to get back up, or of becoming the sudden victim to a heart attack or diabetic coma. By wearing the transmitter contained in a necklace or wristband, these people can live alone while being able to instantly summon help as needed. This chapter discusses these services.
28	Your Discretion, Privacy, and Confidentiality It is unfortunate that so many aides unavoidably know your intimate thoughts, concerns, values, and beliefs. In return, you often know more about their personal lives than they would prefer. While this exchange might be unavoidable, what should be avoidable is the sharing of these facts with the outside world. This chapter provides examples as well as strategies to minimize a “slip of the lip” for you or your PAs with outside friends.
29	Your Training Role and Objective: To Direct Some; To Teach, Instruct, and Train Most; and To Educate a Select Few Your PAs come in all shapes and sizes, with differing interests in your job and different abilities to learn and benefit from working with you. Some have a pint-sized capacity for absorbing only the basics of your brief directions, others have a quart capacity for remembering your more detailed instructions, and a rewarding few are working for you on their way to a therapy or medical degree. The third group is eager for an education from you. This chapter helps you recognize the difference among these three types of PAs, and how to gear your directions, instructions, and education accordingly.
Appendices
	MiCASSA, Olmstead, and ADAPT—Your Medicaid Rights and Funding for PAs The mission of this book is to provide you the skills to manage your PAs; other people have concentrated their efforts on ensuring you have the funding and rights to do so. This appendix briefly outlines some of those legislative efforts and provides a few of the many references for monitoring their progress and getting involved.
	Selected Resource Bibliography While this reference book is quite comprehensive in “how to” strategies, it is far from exhaustive. I have provided a list of books, journals, magazines, small publications, and videos that can supplement the topics found in my book.
	Your Advice Is Requested and Please Register for Your Free Newsletter Feedback from readers of the two previous editions made possible this third edition. You are invited to share what parts of this book worked well for you, and which ones did not. Your own innovative strategies and management tips are also welcome. You are also invited to register for your free e-newsletter where tips and strategies are also shared.