About the National Care Planning Council

September 19, 2007 - By the NCPC

How the Council Came to Be
The National Care Planning Council is a result of my passion about helping people plan for long term care. My wife, Susan, and I experienced the challenge of long term care with all four of our parents. I helped my mother for many years with my father’s Parkinson's Disease until she succumbed to physical and mental exhaustion at which point we had to place my dad in a nursing home. She destroyed her health by taking care of my father and we ended up caring for her in our home for three years until her death. Shortly after my mother's death, Susan's father -- who was caring for his wife at home -- had a stroke. We could not handle both of them in our home so he went to a nursing home and we took care of her mother for another two years until she died. We didn't have much of a life for five years.

As a result of this experience, I started selling long term care insurance about 12 years ago. Even though insurance is a good solution for some people, it does not work for everyone and insurance is only a means of funding and does not necessarily solve the day-to-day problems with long term care. Recognizing the need for long term care planning beyond insurance, I started teaching care planning workshops at a local community college and at various high schools throughout the community. I organized a local group of care planning specialists -- an elder law attorney, a care manager, a home care provider, a reverse mortgage specialist and me -- and we called ourselves the Utah Eldercare Planning Council. Everyone in the group participated in the planning workshops and we helped solve problems with family members who were dealing with long term care for their loved ones.

The outgrowth of this care planning educational project was my creating a website, five years ago, devoted to free care planning resources for the public. A similar site was also created for our local council here in Utah. I called the national website "Long Term Care Link"  (www.longtermcarelink.net).  After three years, the site became quite popular for Internet searches and a number of care providers contacted me to list their services on the website. The creation of the National Care Planning Council followed a year later and was a natural progression of my history with the care planning website. We launched the Council officially in February of 2006. We currently have about 800 members.

Benefits the Council Offers to Its Members
Right now, the reward for membership with the National Care Planning Council is our listing of our members’ services on the national website. The cost is very reasonable and most of our members are satisfied with the public response to their listings. However, our goal is much more ambitious than a listing service. We intend to make the National Care Planning Council an advocate for long term care planning and to support our members through educational and marketing resources that we will produce. Ultimately, our goal is to organize members of the National Care Planning Council into local care planning council groups in their various states.

We took the first step towards our larger goal by publishing a first-of-its-kind, how-to book for the veterans aid and attendance pension benefit. This disability income -- under the right circumstances -- could be available to at least one third of all seniors but hardly anyone knows about it or how to get it. This reference and handbook can be purchased at a substantial discount by our members. Or interested purchasers can join the Council for only $8.00 a month and then get the 38% discount on the book. The book is available to members and nonmembers alike at www.veteranbook.com.

Many of our members are finding great success with the veterans aid and attendance handbook. Home care providers, attorneys, financial planners, care managers, estate planners, seniors real estate specialists, assisted living facilities and many others are using the knowledge from this book to bring in new clients. Aid and attendance could potentially be available for one third of all seniors, but since it is such a well-kept secret, any knowledgeable consultant, who can help the public get this benefit, will attract new clients like a magnet.

We also launched a comprehensive resource website in July of this year to help the public understand the VA benefit. As far as I know, no one on the Internet has this much free information about the aid and attendance pension. The website is found at www.veteransaidbenefit.org. Feel free to link to this website or use it as a resource for your clients.

Another exciting project we are currently completing is the publication of a new book called "The 4 Steps of Long Term Care Planning." This book not only introduces a formal planning process to the public but stresses the importance of using care providers or advisers like you. The book is intended to be used as a marketing tool for our members and we plan on making it available to members, in quantity, at just a few dollars above our cost. A PowerPoint presentation, built around using this book for community or worksite workshops, will be available to our members in a few months.

Organizing State Care Planning Councils
The project we are working on that will be of most benefit to members is expansion of our state care planning councils beyond Utah. We will complete a new website for Nevada by the end of next month and by the end of the year we should have websites operating for Arizona and Colorado as well. By the end of next year, we should have another 20 state websites added. The ultimate goal is to have councils in about 40 states. After the websites have been up and operating for a number of months and drawing significant traffic and public inquiries, we will start organizing state councils with our national members in those states.

Three years of experience with the Utah Eldercare Planning Council has resulted in a substantial number of Internet leads and networking referrals for our local members. We just launched a new version of the Utah website last week and it is already drawing four to five good leads a day. Based on this new web initiative, we anticipate, over the next few months, an additional 20 to 40 Utah care providers -- with specialties not currently covered -- will request to be members of the State Council. You can see our new website at www.careutah.com.

I am excited about the direction we are going with the National Care Planning Council. Our intent is to become a major national force in promoting and supporting planning for long term care.