Family caregiving affects millions of Americans every day, in all walks of life. At least 17.7 million individuals in the United States are caregivers of an older adult with a health or functional limitation. The nation's family caregivers provide the lion's share of long-term care for our older adult population. They are also central to older adults' access to and receipt of health care and community-based social services. Yet the need to recognize and support caregivers is among the least appreciated challenges facing the aging U.S. population. Families Caring for an Aging America examines the prevalence and nature of family caregiving of older adults and the available evidence on the effectiveness of programs, supports, and other interventions designed to support family caregivers. This report also assesses and recommends policies to address the needs of family caregivers and to minimize the barriers that they encounter in trying to meet the needs of older adults.
Surviving Family Care Giving: Co-ordinating effective care through collaborative communication is a practical book for family and other home carers in a variety of situations. Gráinne Smith shows how to provide the most effective coordinated care possible through constructive communication and collaborative care, to support individuals who have long term physical and mental health problems, including conditions from Alzheimers to alchoholism, autism to anorexia, schizophrenia to multiple sclerosis. Written from personal experience as a family carer, Gráinne Smith includes interviews with other carers and service users; and draws on years of working with children and their families in tough times. Chapters such as Challenging Behaviour, Confidentiality, and Motivation illustrate some of the many problems facing carers who support vulnerable individuals. Problems include isolation, feelings of helplessness and uncertainty about what best to do, what to try to avoid and the lack of much needed relevant information and resources to support care-giving. Surviving Family Care Giving vividly illustrates the daily difficulties experienced by care givers who offer long term care and support – and shows how to work through them. It provides suggestions on ways to build both constructive collaborative care and good family teamwork through effective communication, and how to ensure continuing care and support for the person at the centre of all the efforts. This book will be essential reading for family and other carers, including professionals trying to create ongoing continuity of care for their patients outside of treatment and education centres.
"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/
A practical handbook for women confronting the problems of caring for an aging parent explains how to deal with the changing parent/child roles, foster aging parents' independence, get help from other family members, find time for oneself, and balance work, family, and caregiving responsibilities. Original.
Caregiving: A Daughter's Story tells the story of a Daughter who experienced the surprise, joys and pain of watching loved ones become ill and eventually die. Suddenly she became the decision maker for those who once made decisions for her. When did the roles change from carefree child to adult caregiver for the loving parents who raised her? How did she cope and survive the process? Learn how an average person, like you, learned to make healthcare and other professionals LISTEN and work with her (and not dictate to her) to make decisions on behalf of loved ones. Read the story of an ordinary person coping with the stresses and joys of caregiving for loved ones, how to survive through the caregiving process, and how to say "NO" to others when caregiving is over.
This brief provides approaches to help family caregivers understand the role of caregiving, its challenges and consequences. Using real life case examples, it illustrates the essentials of family caregiving. The caregiving role can be a source of caregiver stress and can become increasingly burdensome. People are now living longer and acquiring chronic diseases, which makes it necessary to involve caregivers to assist in disability care for longer periods of time, and live out their end-time at home, which means caregivers are more and more needed, especially at the end-of-life. This brief illustrates the role and scope of caregiving and its future growth. It is useful to physicians, social workers, sociologists, psychologists, nurses, public health, public policy and families and has a broad appeal for use in courses on Death and Dying.
The best resource for a family caregiver is another family caregiver. And, the best resource for a new family caregiver is a seasoned family caregiver who knows what works and what doesn't. In "A Caregiving Survival Guide," you share your best suggestions, tips and resources with a friend, colleague or family member who is new to a caregiving role. You pass along your wisdom, your lessons learned and your best solutions to help a friend caring for a family member with a chronic illness. With this book, you can share your advice through your written word, through photos, through printed pages you paste onto the guide's blank pages. You can create a journal, a scrap book, a detailed record. The simple book gives your wisdom center stage. The guide prompts you to share your suggestions for your friend about: --Activity ideas --Advocating --Taking breaks --Finding comfort --Working with family --Understanding forgiveness --Getting help --Managing hospitalizations --Organizing paperwork and schedules --Providing personal care --Asking the best questions --Stocking the right supplies You'll also share inspirations, resources and wishes to help keep your friend going. With the information you share in "A Caregiving Survival Guide," your friend will be armed to manage whatever comes in a caregiving day. "A Caregiving Survival Guide" is a great gift for anyone-a friend, support group member or colleague-just beginning a caregiving journey. Your thoughtfulness will start their caregiving journey on the right foot.
"As a registered nurse, Lois Moody shares the unique perspective of how her family faced the pitfalls, emotional strains, and daily struggles on their journey from diagnosis to release."--
This comprehensive resource offers a detailed framework for fostering resilience in families caring for their older members. Its aim is to improve the quality of life for both the caregivers themselves as much as for those they support. Robust interventions are presented to guide family members through chronic and acute challenges in areas such as emotional health, physical comfort, financial aspects of care, dealing with health systems, and adjusting to transition. Examples, models, interviews, and an extended case study identify core concerns of caregiving families and avenues for nurturing positive adaptation. Throughout, contributors provide practical applications for therapists and other service providers in diverse disciplines, and for advancing family resilience as a field. Included in the coverage: Therapeutic interventions for caregiving families. Facilitating older adults’ resilience through meeting nutritional needs. Improving ergonomics for the safety, comfort, and health of caregivers. Hope as a coping resource for caregiver resilience and well-being. Perspectives on navigating care transitions with individuals with dementia. Planning for and managing costs related to caregiving. Family Caregiving offers a new depth of knowledge and real-world utility to social workers, mental health professionals and practitioners, educators and researchers in the field of family resilience, as well as scholars in the intersecting disciplines of family studies, human development, psychology, sociology, social work, education, law, and medicine.
Published in cooperation with the Center for Practice Innovations, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University Increased life expectancy, the deinstitutionalization of persons with mental illness, the rise of home health care, and advances in medical technology have resulted in greater numbers of dependent people requiring care by family members. The frail elderly, the chronically mentally ill, and the physically disabled are examples of such groups who now receive their daily care in the community. How do families accept the burden of this care? What are the physical and emotional demands of such caregiving? Are the families prepared to assume this role? Family Caregiving Across the Lifespan considers the broad spectrum of chronic illnesses that necessitate family caregiving throughout the lifespan and expands the caregiving paradigm by including in its focus both members of the caregiving dyad and significant non-family caregivers. It also explores the social context in which care is provided--an entire section of the volume is devoted to discussions of the interface between informal and formal caregivers and society at large. Among the other subjects this volume addresses are the negative consequences of family caregiving, the value of providing support to caregivers, and caregivers of persons living with AIDS. Family Caregiving Across the Lifespan is important reading for those in social work, nursing, family medicine, and clinical psychology. "Family Caregiving Across the Lifespan represents a significant milestone in the continuing maturation of this vital area of long-term care. The title is an understatement of the authors′ accomplishments. . . .Rather than offering narrow boxes or labels, the book invites the reader to join in a broadened perspective on caregiving so that it can more fully reflect the richness of the lives of all involved. . . .For those who encounter Family Caregiving Across the Lifespan as part of their continuing study of caregiving, the book provides the integrating milestone of caregiving literature." --Journal of Case Management "This volume is a useful compendium of articles on family caregiving. The fourteen chapters in this volume address many important topics in family caregiving. One of the book′s major contributions is its clarification that family caregiving to frail or chronically ill people has no age limitation, although there are unique issues at different points in the development of individuals and families. The book has exceptional merit. It expands our understanding of family caregiving, provides important ideas for future research, offers research findings that enhance our understanding of family care, and presents a very useful review of the literature. This book would be a beneficial addition to the library of all researchers in the area of caregiving. They will discover worthwhile conceptualizations and gain new insights that can inform their research. Practitioners should also benefit from this collection. The chapters addressing interaction between forma land informal caregivers should give practitioners a deeper understanding of how to be more effective in dealing with informal caregivers and care recipients." -Ageing & Society "One paper [in this volume] deserves particular notice because it attempts to do what many of the authors feel is most critical in caregiving research but also most difficult, namely, to analyze the effectiveness of caregiving, the effect of provision of care on elder health outcomes. This is an important and original conceptualization of the problem..." -Steven M. Albert, Contemporary Gerontology "This book is both unique and valuable because it embraces Brody′s observation that family caregiving is not limited to a specific segment of the life span. Moreover, the book is not limited to filial caregiving, but entertains an impressive variety of contexts of family caregiving. . . . This book will be a valuable text in graduate-level courses." --Journal of Marriage and the Family
