Everybody's doing it: Caregiver help sites

You may have noticed a proliferation of all kinds of websites for caregivers. According to Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology, the surge is partly a response to need--and partly a response to commercial opportunity.

“All of a sudden, it’s like caregivers have money,” said Gail Hunt of the National Alliance for Caregiving. “The baby boomers have to care for their parents, and there’s money to be made.”

Some of the sites, in other words, are all about the advertising.

But folks who run “altruistic” sites with no profit motive can learn some lessons from the often young entrepreneurs who understand social networking. Chief among these: the term “caregiver” doesn’t resonate with Boomers. We don’t see ourselves as caregivers but as family members—or even “baby sitters.” Caregiving is a market with more than one niche.

Realizing that, some sites are including services for the other side of the Boomer sandwich: childcare and tutoring, for example.

One site is called Lotsa Helping Hands. Developed in cooperation with the National Alliance for Caregiving, it has “created 6,000 ‘communities’ for users, mostly networks focused on a specific patient’s circle of caregivers,” according to article author Christopher Calnan.

Sites that list providers often offer a free basic service and charge monthly rates for “premium” services as well as using advertising.

Hunt warns that most of these businesses will disappear like the dot.coms – unless they develop the “Holy Grail:” comprehensive information combined with a database of local resources for users.

In Milwaukee, the Family Caregiver Support Network offers diverse help and information and a social support network for caregivers--for free.

Other excellent noncommercial sites include the Family Caregiver Alliance, and Hunt's organization's website Caregiving.org.

Strength for Caring is a great site owned by a commercial enterprise, Johnson & Johnson.

We’d love to hear about the best websites for caregivers—and what’s needed but not there. Comments and guest blog entries are most welcome!

Depression and stress: how can we help caregivers?

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health includes some concerning evidence about depression among caregivers--and people in social services. One way to help caregivers: a local event for the mind, body, and spirit.


The Problem

People employed in personal care and service have the highest rate of major depression, with nearly 11% reporting episodes in the last year, according to a report released last week by the Office of Applied Studies, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). (Depression among adults employed full-time, by occupational category)

A “major depressive episode” lasts two weeks or longer. The overall rate of worker depression is about 7%, and it leads to $30-40 billion in lost revenue. It’s a huge cause of absenteeism and low morale.

Other occupations that seem to put people at greater risk for depression are food preparation/serving, community and social services, and healthcare practitioners and technicians (all around 10%).

Women are at higher risk than men. The one good piece of news for people in the job market: those who work full time are significantly less likely to have had depressive episodes than people who are unemployed.

Caring for the Caregiver:
Not just a concept but an event

If you know caregivers, chances are you know people under stress. The Milwaukee Aging Consortium’s Caregiver Retention Project is one local effort to reduce caregiver stress by improving training, networking, and stress management among direct care providers.

An important free, day-long event for all types of caregivers is being offered by a number of concerned organizations including the Consortium. Please tell the caregivers you know about Caring for the Caregiver: an Event for the Mind, Body, and Spirit,Saturday, November 3, 2007, from 11 am to 5 pm, at Mount Mary College, 2900 N. Menomonee Parkway in Milwaukee.

Highlights include resources, networking, and a keynote address by Mary Marcdante (Author of My Mother, My Friend).

Perhaps most intriguing are breakout sessions include financial and legal issues, caring for difficult people, stress management, grief, faith and inspiration, laughter therapy, dementia, and activities.

At the end, caregivers will receive a certificate of attendance. Call 414-220-8600 to register.

And please let us know about your ideas, events, and experiences with caregivers and caregiving!

Attitudes, beliefs about race affect us all

One of the interesting “factoids” Jeff Browne of the Public Policy Forum presented at the Milwaukee Aging Consortium member meeting on race relations May 10 was the reluctance of people of color to drive into the more distant—and more white—suburbs. For caregivers, those who place them, and those who need them, that can present big problems.

That reluctance comes from perceptions about dealings with the police and from fear. You can read the report here, but two excerpts follow:

• Police dealings – The biggest single racial gap found on the survey related to dealings with police. Just 1% of whites feel they have ever been stopped by
police because of their race, while half of blacks (including the vast majority of
black males) and a third of Hispanics feel they have.

• Common sense or prejudice? – There is a racial gap in what constitutes prejudice. Most whites view racial profiling by police and avoidance of driving through nonwhite neighborhoods as common sense. Most people of color perceive those decisions as prejudice.

To put some flesh on the bones of the statistics,
consider this story from last week’s Journal Sentinel online:

County park worker sues Tosa
Police seeking black robbery suspect had bias, she says

Dressed in office attire, Alfrieda Durrah was leaving work at a Milwaukee County parks building when she was ordered to the ground at gunpoint by Wauwatosa police, handcuffed and forced to lie face-down on the ground. . .

The lawsuit says that the robber had been described as in her 40s, between 5 feet 8 inches and 5 feet10 inches tall, 180 to 200 pounds with short, straight black hair, brown eyes, medium skin tone, wearing a short-sleeved gray top and blue shorts or pants. . .

Durrah is approximately four to six inches shorter, weighed 20 to 40 pounds less and was six years older than the described assailant, and was wearing completely different clothing, the suit says.

Ms. Durrah’s coworkers were just 3 blocks away, ready to vouch for where she was that day, had anyone asked.

Do you have any experiences in which race played into caregiver relationships? How did the people involved talk about and resolve the problems? If they didn't, what prevented them from doing so? How can we make things better?

Resources, we’ve got resources

So much information, so little time! Here’s a list of resources that have come across our desks recently. Most are new; one isn’t, but the issue of paying caregivers is before us always, and especially as government budgets are being tweaked.

Aging workforce
“The National Association of Professional Employer Organizations wanted to know what the small businesses its members serve are doing about their aging work forces.” Don’t be put off by the authorship: Older and Wiser: As the Work Force Ages, Small Businesses Change, Too is a fascinating and useful report.


Alzheimer’s disease
Alzheimer’s Association report on prevalence, March 2007.
“There are now more than 5 million people in the United States living with Alzheimer’s disease. This number includes 4.9 million people over the age of 65 and between 200,000 and 500,000 people under age 65 with early onset Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. This is a 10 percent increase from the previous prevalence nationwide estimate of 4.5 million.”

According to Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), “Now we need an All-American effort to not only find breakthroughs, but to make sure we are giving patients and their families the support they need.”

Medicare and Medicaid primers
New Medicare primer
New Medicaid primer

“Together, Medicare and Medicaid provide health coverage to about 90 million Americans. To help explain the two programs, the Kaiser Family Foundation has issued a new primer on the Medicare program and an updated version of its primer on the Medicaid program. Prepared by Foundation staff, the primers provide an overview of the programs, who they serve, how the programs work, and how they are financed.”

Paying for quality care
Paying For Quality Care: State and Local Strategies for Improving Wages and Benefits for Personal Care Assistants “was written by Dorie Seavey and Vera Salter in October 2006 and published by the AARP Public Policy Institute. This report examines state and local initiatives to improve wages and benefits for direct-care workers delivering Medicaid personal care services. The authors outline seven strategies -- wage pass-through legislation, rate enhancements linked to provider performance goals, updated reimbursement rates, litigation against state Medicaid agencies, collective bargaining, living wage ordinances and minimum wage improvements, and health insurance initiatives -- discussing the advantages and disadvantages of each.”

Caregivers and the next Wisconsin biennial budget

The Wisconsin Long Term Care Workforce Alliance has been spearheading efforts to raise Medicaid reimbursement rates, which would affect direct caregiver wages.

They've asked us to send letters and call our state legislators and Governor Doyle, with an earlier deadline of December 1 for a petition drive. But there's still time to call your legislators, according to Anne Medeiros.

On the legislative front, Governor Jim Doyle plans to introduce his biennial budget to the legislature on February 13th. There is still time to contact his office by letter, phone, or email with your request for a 5% increase to CIP, COP, personal care, home health, nursing homes, and Community Aids.

More information at the Alliance archives.

Iowa CareGivers Approach

More good ideas come from the Iowa CareGivers Association's legislative priorities to address the problem of caregiver turnover:

Funding for the state Department of Public Health for expanded education and new standards oversight.

Raising the minimum wage and exploring ways to increase the average wage.

Expanding health care coverage for all of Iowa's uninsured and underinsured.

Increasing the tobacco tax by $1 to fund the initiatives.

Develop data collection mechanisms to measure outcomes that matter in nursing facilities by worker classification.