Support for Caregivers

 

A caregiver provides some form of assistance to another person, who is in need of help, due to a physical or mental problem or both.  The assistance needed can range from an occasional trip to the store for someone who is homebound to 24-hour care for a very frail senior.  A caregiver may be a family member, a friend or a neighbor.  Family or friends provide over 80% of the help received by frail seniors living in the community.  The caregiver may or may not live with the care receiver.

Becoming a caregiver is often an unplanned and unexpected experience.  Individuals may find themselves in the caregiver role with little time for assessing the situation or for proper training.  Finding the right service or obtaining the information needed may take a lot of time and energy even in the best of times.  It can be especially trying in a time of crisis.

Caregivers come in all shapes and sizes, all ages, genders and ethnicities.  The average caregiver is a woman in her mid-forties who is caring for one or more parents for about 15 hours per week.  She also has a job and one or more children to care for.

The National Family Caregiver Support Program (NFCSP) is designed to support caregivers in their role of providing care for their loved ones.  It is funded by the Older Americans Act Reauthorization of 2000.  The services the NFCSP provide are driven by the needs of the caregiver.  Services that are available include:

Some of this funding was used locally to develop a brochure about where to access these services and to create a newsletter for caregivers.

 PBS aired & Thou Shalt Honor, a documentary about caregiving and caregivers, on Wednesday, October 9, 2002.   The purpose of the program is to promote awareness of the issue,  awareness of the needs of caregivers and discussion of the importance of the issue before it becomes a national crisis.  Visit the website at www.thoushalthonor.org to learn more about the series and to access information about caregivers, care recipients, caregiving professionals, caregiving partners, grassroots efforts, books and tapes and spiritual caregiving.

In addition, And Thou Shalt Honor - The Caregiver's Companion, a book that goes along with the documentary has been recently published and is available though the West Central Ohio Health Ministries Program's library.  The library will also have tapes of the  program as soon as they are available.

For additional information about available services for the elderly and their caregivers, visit PSA 3 Agency on Aging's website at www.psa3.org

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