Submitted by: Lauren Watral, MSW Raleigh Geriatric Care Management
Beyond Driving with Dignity: A unique and innovative tool for Raleigh area professionals
Do you think your older loved-one (or client!) may be experiencing diminishing driving skills due to the aging process? Are they becoming lost in familiar places, bumping into curbs, mailboxes, or scraping the sides of the garage when they back out? Have they been involved in a minor parking lot fender-bender or do they complain about being honked at? Do they seem easily confused or more forgetful when you talk with them on the phone?
If so, don’t panic; you’re certainly not alone. The most important thing to remember is that the time to start addressing your concerns is now, before “concerns” turn into “tragedies”.
Keeping Us Safe is a national organization that provides practical, real-life solutions to older drivers and their families. “Beyond Driving with Dignity; The workbook for older drivers and their families” serves as the foundation of our family-centered “Beyond Driving with Dignity” program.
The workbook was specifically designed to help your family by providing you with a “roadmap to success” in your quest to overcome the challenges of an older driver’s safety. It is designed to be used by families as a tool to meet the demands of a potential problem when you become suspect of the senior driver’s ability to remain a safe driver.
Timely and appropriate use of this workbook and of all available resources will help keep families from making many of the common mistakes encountered by others as you move toward a possible driving retirement for your loved one or client.
However, the workbook may not be beneficial to your specific family dynamics. For families that might benefit from third-party, impartial intervention in resolving this very delicate and sensitive issue, we offer you our Certified “Beyond Driving with Dignity” professionals. These individuals have been specially trained and certified in the “Enhanced Self-Assessment Program” for older drivers.
Keeping Us Safe and the “Beyond Driving with Dignity” program have been recognized by the NY Times, the Kiplinger Retirement Report, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, The Huffington Post, and the National Institute on Aging’s Alzheimer’s Disease Education and Referral Center.
Lauren Watral, MSW and owner of Raleigh Geriatric Care Management is one of only sixty Certified “Beyond Driving with Dignity” Professionals in the United States. Lauren is able to offer both the Beyond Driving with Dignity workbook and Keeping Us Safe’s “self-assessment program for older drivers” throughout the greater Raleigh area. Lauren is also a personal contributor to the workbook in a segment offering advice on how to have difficult conversations with an elderly parent or client.
The “Beyond Driving with Dignity” program is designed to help older drivers with diminishing driving skills make a smooth transition from the driver’s seat to the passenger seat without deterioration to their dignity, personal pride or independence.
Keeping Us Safe’s programs are designed to save lives while simultaneously helping to ease the burden of the family as they find themselves faced with this very challenging issue.
In addition to offering the workbook and the self-assessment program, Lauren is also available to speak to your group or organization in presentations titled:
1) A Safe Drive through the Aging Process
Developed specifically for senior drivers, this 1-hour presentation for your group or organization can best be described as a practical, entertaining and realistic approach to the issue of “Senior Drivers Vs. the Aging Process”.
This presentation is not meant to be another safe-driving or driver-refresher program (seniors have seen them all by now!) but rather it is designed to increase awareness concerning the onset of diminishing driving skills related to the aging process.
The presentation takes a direct yet compassionate approach to the very sensitive subject of recognizing that someday it may be time to relinquish some of that treasured driving independence.
The ultimate goal is not to take away driving opportunities of older drivers, but rather to offer suggestions on how to recognize and compensate for diminishing skills so that our seniors may remain on the roadways as safe drivers.
2) Adults with Aging Parent Drivers
This is a 1-hour group presentation developed to help members of the baby-boomer generation when they become concerned about a loved-one’s ability to drive safely as a result of the natural aging process.
In this presentation, we provide a roadmap to help families address the issue with tact, compassion, and empathy, so that the older driver’s dignity and independence is never unnecessarily jeopardized.
To schedule Lauren for a presentation, to learn more about the self-assessment program or to purchase “Beyond Driving with Dignity; The workbook for older drivers and their families”, you are encouraged to contact Lauren at 919-803-8025 or by email at [email protected]
To learn more about Keeping Us Safe’s programs, please visit their website at www.keepingussafe.org or call toll free 877-907-8841.