When Alzheimers strikes: Five ways to respond

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

One of the things that cre­ates strong bonds with key clients is let­ting them know that you under­stand and are think­ing about all of their impor­tant issues, not just the ones related to their finances or the ones you’re mak­ing money from.

The unfor­tu­nate real­ity is that clients run into adver­sity all the time. Many advi­sors feel chal­lenged in respond­ing when clients encounter dif­fi­culty … and rather than feel­ing awk­ward because they “don’t know what to say”, say noth­ing at all. That’s a mis­take — it’s in times of set­backs that clients need us the most.

If that adver­sity relates to their busi­ness fail­ing or job loss, clients cer­tainly need our sup­port, but at least there are spe­cific things we can sug­gest and con­crete rec­om­men­da­tions we can make.

It’s more dif­fi­cult when clients are deal­ing with death of a fam­ily mem­ber or severe ill­ness … advi­sors often feel pow­er­less and frus­trated by how lit­tle we can do beyond pro­vid­ing moral support.

For instance, just about every advi­sor has clients with fam­ily mem­bers strug­gling with Alzheimer’s, whether par­ents, spouses or sib­lings. Among the things that makes Alzheimer’s so dev­as­tat­ing is there’s no way to pre­vent it, no cure at this time and how deal­ing with some­one suf­fer­ing from this dis­ease can con­sume a family.

When clients are deal­ing with Alzheimers in their fam­ily or other adver­sity, one way to broach the sub­ject is with a hand­writ­ten note (def­i­nitely not an email!) with the sim­ple words:

“As you’re going through this dif­fi­cult time, know that my thoughts are with you. If there’s any­thing at all that I can do to help, even in a small way, please don’t hes­i­tate to give me a call.”

That expres­sion of sup­port is a good start — but if you’re really seri­ous about being there for clients in tough times, a start is all it is. Here are five strate­gies you can use when Alzheimers strike a client’s fam­ily, that go beyond just expres­sions of sympathy.

The first relates to updat­ing the client’s finan­cial plan … or where they’ve resisted spend­ing the time to develop a plan, this kind of an event may be the trig­ger that per­suades them they need to do this.

The sec­ond sug­ges­tion is an idea I wrote about in my twice weekly blog in early Jan­u­ary, the rest come from  advi­sors who responded that idea or to a note I sent out ask­ing what advi­sors are doing when clients run into Alzheimers in their fam­ily. (By coin­ci­dence, or per­haps not, almost all of the advi­sors who responded with their own strate­gies were women.)

Strat­egy One : Take the lead in updat­ing the client’s finan­cial situation

Every sig­nif­i­cant change in a client’s sit­u­a­tion, pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive, brings with it the need to reassess where they stand financially.

For clients already stressed out about the poten­tial cost of long term care for a spouse or fam­ily mem­ber with severe med­ical prob­lems, uncer­tainty about the impact on their finances makes a bad sit­u­a­tion worse  … and the issue is even more pro­nounced in cases like Alzheimers when you’re deal­ing with issues around com­pe­tence to make deci­sions and pow­ers of attorney.

Advi­sors can per­form an impor­tant ser­vice by help­ing bring clar­ity on the finan­cial impact of any seri­ous dis­ease, whether from reduced earn­ings or the cost of care. The key is to do this in a way that min­i­mizes the bur­den on clients, who are often pre­oc­cu­pied with treat­ment options and also to raise this in a way that doesn’t come off as insensitive.

Some things to consider:

• - When talk­ing to clients deal­ing with seri­ous ill­ness on the part of a close fam­ily mem­ber, tell them that if they’d like to sit down briefly to work through the impact of the dis­ease on their finan­cial sit­u­a­tion, you’ll make your­self avail­able at any time.
• - Depend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion, you may sug­gest to your client that they invite their adult chil­dren to sit in on the meet­ing … or to have an ini­tial meet­ing with them and then if they feel com­fort­able with this offer to have a fol­low up meet­ing with their children.
• - Where there are con­cerns about com­pe­tence, you could sug­gest to clients that their lawyer review the power of attor­ney in place … and if their lawyer doesn’t have exper­tise on this, offer to refer them to an expert in this area.
• - With­out breach­ing con­fi­dences, it can be help­ful to tell clients that you’ve run into other sit­u­a­tions sim­i­lar to theirs … and to dis­cuss what you’ve learned from those.

Strat­egy Two: Help clients stay abreast of developments

One way to reach out to clients is to be alert to news­wor­thy arti­cles regard­ing impor­tant devel­op­ments on the issue they’re strug­gling with, so clients hear about them first from you.

In early Jan­u­ary, my twice weekly blog pointed to a New York Times arti­cle on how a “comfort-centered” approach to care appears to ease some of the symp­toms among Alzheimer’s suf­fer­ers — this is part of an  ongo­ing series on Alzheimer’s.

I heard from sev­eral advi­sors who’d for­warded this arti­cle to clients grap­pling with Alzheimer’s in their fam­ily … and who’d received an over­whelm­ingly pos­i­tive response. By send­ing this arti­cle, they’d reminded clients that they were aware of their issue and were with them in spirit. Bear in mind that given the level of con­cern on this issue, clients  deal­ing with Alzheimer’s in their fam­ily might already have seen this arti­cle.  If you do send this, you may want to say some­thing like:

I thought of you when I read this arti­cle on some advances in treat­ment of Alzheimers patients … in case you haven’t seen this, I’m send­ing it along. Please know that my thoughts are with you as you and your fam­ily strug­gle with this dis­ease — if there’s ever any­thing I can do to help, please don’t hes­i­tate to give me a call.

Here’s the link to the arti­cle, titled “Giv­ing Alzheimers Patients Their Way, Even Choco­late.”

http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​1​1​/​0​1​/​0​1​/​h​e​a​l​t​h​/​0​1​c​a​r​e​.​h​tml

And here’s a link to the entire series, titled The Van­ish­ing Mind.

http://​top​ics​.nytimes​.com/​t​o​p​/​n​e​w​s​/​h​e​a​l​t​h​/​s​e​r​i​e​s​/​t​h​e​_​v​a​n​i​s​h​i​n​g​_​m​i​n​d​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​h​tml

Strat­egy Three: Raise your own knowl­edge level

Based on the response to the NY Times arti­cle, I asked advi­sors who get my twice weekly blog for ideas to sup­port clients who have fam­ily mem­bers afflicted with this disease.

One advi­sor named Susan responded this way:

“I always start meet­ings with clients by ask­ing whether anything’s hap­pened in their lives since                 we last met that I should know about, whether good or bad. About 95% of the time I don’t hear       any­thing new or I hear great news about pro­mo­tions or their kids get­ting uni­ver­sity schol­ar­ships    or per­haps expect­ing chil­dren them­selves and we con­tinue on with the meet­ing, unless of course     their good news has impli­ca­tions we need to discuss.

The other 5% of the time, though, the answer causes our meet­ing to move in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion             … I hear about health or work issues with them or fam­ily mem­bers or kids strug­gling with             school or careers.

Last fall, I real­ized that in the past eigh­teen months I’d had three clients talk about a par­ent        diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s … and how drain­ing this had become for them and other fam­ily        members.

I decided I needed to learn more … and went to an infor­ma­tion ses­sion that the Alzheimers          Asso­ci­a­tion in my city puts on for peo­ple where a fam­ily mem­ber has been diag­nosed with this.     What I heard was a real eye-opener, as a result I’m bet­ter able to relate to the issues my clients     are deal­ing with  and ended up ask­ing two of my team to go to a sim­i­lar ses­sion the next month.”

Susan also directed me to a web­site that offers prac­ti­cal advice for care­givers for Alzheimers patients:

http://​www​.med​i​cinenet​.com/​a​l​z​h​e​i​m​e​r​s​_​d​i​s​e​a​s​e​_​p​a​t​i​e​n​t​_​c​a​r​e​g​i​v​e​r​_​g​u​i​d​e​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​htm

Strat­egy Four: Pro­vide a respite for clients

Another advi­sor named Ellen responded to my blog with an alter­na­tive sug­ges­tion, based on her first hand experience.

Her par­ents live 1000 miles away from both her and her brother, mak­ing it even more dif­fi­cult when her dad was diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s. For two years before his con­di­tion made a nurs­ing home nec­es­sary, her mother was the pri­mary care­giver, under­stand­ably caus­ing tremen­dous stress. One of the things that helped a bit was that twice weekly Ellen and her brother hired a nurse to come into her parent’s home for four hours, allow­ing her mother to shop, do errands and have lunch with friends. This break was invalu­able in help­ing her mother keep her spir­its up dur­ing this very dif­fi­cult situation.

Among her clients, Ellen has two cou­ples in which one has devel­oped Alzheimers, with the other pro­vid­ing care at home; in one case it’s the hus­band pro­vid­ing care, in the other the wife.

A month before the birth­day of the client who’s pro­vid­ing care, Ellen calls and says she’d like to take him or her out for a birth­day lunch. She goes on to say that the son of a client is a reg­is­tered nurse who goes into the homes of peo­ple suf­fer­ing from Alzheimers to pro­vide part-time care. She has spo­ken to her client’s son and if they’re open to this, he would arrive that morn­ing to get to know the spouse with Alzheimers and would then be avail­able to pro­vide care dur­ing the lunch.

Ellen went on to comment:

“My clients are over­whelm­ing grate­ful … not so much for the lunch as for the break and the        acknowl­edge­ment of their sit­u­a­tion. The cost for the nurse and the lunch are triv­ial rel­a­tive to          the out­pour­ing of appre­ci­a­tion from her clients.

And while this was not my moti­va­tion, I’ve come to know one clients’ chil­dren as a result of these             lunches … and we’ve talked about the pos­si­bil­ity of them join­ing as clients also. ”

Strat­egy Five: Build client acknowl­edge­ment into your practice

While one-off might be appre­ci­ated, the chal­lenge is how to scale them into your business.

After a recent talk at a con­fer­ence, I spoke to Lisa, who sys­tem­at­i­cally builds com­mu­ni­ca­tion about the dis­eases caus­ing the most stress for clients into her ongo­ing con­tact with those affected.

She started by review­ing her top clients and iden­ti­fied three dis­eases that had affected mul­ti­ple clients directly or had impacted their close fam­ily mem­bers ..  arthri­tis, Alzheimer’s and breast cancer.

She then did two things.

First, in the course of their ongo­ing read­ing, she and her team began to look for arti­cles about new research find­ings and devel­op­ments on treat­ment of these three dis­eases; one of her team mem­bers also set up a Google alert.

When she finds an appro­pri­ate arti­cle, she sends clients affected a link to that arti­cle, with the note “Thought of you when I read this.” She’s care­ful not to over­whelm clients, her goal is to send some­thing rel­e­vant about once a quar­ter, if possible.

Sec­ond, she’s reori­ented her own char­i­ta­ble giv­ing and fundrais­ing activ­ity to focus on these three causes … and in her last year end let­ter to clients, explained that because sev­eral clients had  been affected by Alzheimer’s, arthri­tis and breast can­cer, for the com­ing year these were the causes her annual fundrais­ing golf tour­na­ment would be supporting.

A final advi­sor named Bill sent an email say­ing that his own dad had suf­fered from Alzheimers. As a result, he’s become involved in orga­niz­ing the “Walk for mem­o­ries” fundraiser for Alzheimers in his com­mu­nity. Every year, he sets a goal of rais­ing $5000, con­tribut­ing the first $2500 him­self and invit­ing friends and clients to match his dona­tion.  He also invites clients to join him on the walk. A num­ber of clients take him up on the offer, gen­er­ally because they too have been touched by this dis­ease; this past year he was joined by ten friends and clients who walked as a group.

Some might crit­i­cize some of these advi­sors for lack­ing spon­tane­ity in how they com­mu­ni­cate around this issue. A reminder though … just car­ing about clients isn’t enough, clients have to know we care. One way to  deepen rela­tion­ships with clients going through a dif­fi­cult time is by remind­ing them that you’re think­ing of them and are there for them.

Clearly, no one com­mu­ni­ca­tions approach will work for every advi­sor. If you too have clients affected by Alzheimers or other degen­er­a­tive dis­eases in their fam­ily, con­sider tak­ing some time at your next team meet­ing to dis­cuss the right method for you to sup­port clients going through a dif­fi­cult time.

Tags: Adversity, Alzheimer, Alzheimers, Bonds, Concrete Recommendations, Dealing With Death, Email, Expression, Expressions Of Sympathy, Family Member, Family Members, Handwritten Note, Mistake, Moral Support, Parents, Setbacks, Siblings, Suffering From, Tough Times, Unfortunate Reality
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