1. Shift Your Focus- Coach Rather Than Do Rayna Neises 29:28

Rayna Neises, your host, speaks with Angie Rischpater. Angie is an occupational therapist with over 20 years of experience. She helps family caregivers by teaching both a preventative and restorative approach to care which allows the Caregiver to live a life beyond caregiving. While still working part-time in acute care at a hospital, Angie also offers private and group Caregiver Coaching. In addition, she writes and is a webinar host for Caregiving.com. Angie shares her mission, to ensure that caregivers have the power to design their experience using a therapeutic perspective, and provides the following insights:  

  • (6:53)  Don’t do everything for them. Instead, coach the person toward greater mobility, cognition, and independence.
  • (10:00)  Think about how you can work towards a common goal with the person you are caring for.
  • (13:08)  Figure out which deficit area is impacting you most.
  • (16:00)  Eliminate the barrier areas.
  • (17:06)  Become more of a coach than a Caregiver.
  • (21:00)  Falls are almost always avoidable.
  • (25:00)  Investing upfront to get your time back in the end.  
  • (26:08)  Make every activity that you can into a therapeutic event.
  • (27:47)  Find Angie on Facebook at Caregiver By Design (https://www.facebook.com/caregiverbydesign/), on TikTok, and on her podcast (Caregiver by Design) where ever you get your podcasts.
  • Thank you for what you do!
Rayna Neises A Season of Caring

Rayna Neises understands the joys and challenges that come from a season of caring. She helped care for both of her parents during their separate battles with Alzheimer’s over a thirty-year span. She is able to look back on those days now with no regrets – and she wishes the same for everyone caring for aging parents.

Rayna is the author of No Regrets: Hope for Your Caregiving Season, an ICF certified coach, the host of “A Season of Caring” podcast, Positive Approach® to Care (PAC)Independent Certified Trainer and speaker who is passionate about offering encouragement, support, and resources for regret-free caring aimed at preventing family caregivers from aimlessly wandering through this important season of life.

Rayna lives on a farm in southeast Kansas with her husband, Ron, and small pack of adorable dogs. She is the baby of her family, but most would never guess that. She is a former teacher who enjoys crafts of all kinds and spending time with her grandkids most of all.