My education and my own personal life experience caring for my own parents offers me a unique understanding for which to provide aging and dying advocacy services. 

With a Masters in Gerontology and a certification as a Death Midwife, I feel strongly that one of my roles is to advocate for our older population and for those who are dying (at any age).  Picture this common scene: an Intensive Care Unit in a hospital, there is a dying family member - with no hope of recovery - and a suffering family, wanting every last treatment possible performed on their loved one. The frequent disagreements between family members can make the situation even more difficult to handle. 

I am available as a non-biased individual, with a background in aging and death, to sit with a family and mediate or discuss these types of situations.  I am able to come with an open heart and an understanding for each person’s individual feelings and position. 

In an effort to avoid these types of situations, I highly encourage every person to put together their paperwork which details how they would like situations such as these to be handled.  It is such a gift for the family to know what their loved one desired and provides such a relief of burden of having to make difficult decisions for someone they love who can no longer speak for themselves.  However, if this paperwork does not exist and family members need support and/or advocacy or mediation, I can arrive at the hospital or a neutral location to work with the family to process through the tough decisions they need to make.

I have two goals here: to do what is best for the dying family member, and to make sure that each family member finds some peace in the decisions that need to be made. Then they can move forward through the grieving process without carrying additional guilt.

This is generally an on-call service.  My goal is to be able to meet with the family as quickly as possible, but I do have to work around my schedule as well.  My standard fee is $375 for the first two hours on site (travel of more than 20 miles may incur an additional fee).  This covers the on-call fee and rearranging my schedule to join the family.  After the first two hours, I charge an hourly rate of $150/hr.  I am happy to work with families on payment plans if needed.  Families who utilize me as a mediator/advocate also receive a reduced price for bereavement counseling if they so choose.