Caregivers need help too

By Max Goodwin

Today, about 59 million Americans serve as family caregivers, providing essential support to family members with chronic, disabling, or serious health conditions, according to an annual report released by the AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving.

That is more than a fifth of all adults and is a 50 percent increase from a decade ago. These caregivers are increasingly younger; now, one in three is under the age of 50, and 29 percent are in the sandwich generation, meaning they are supporting both children and adults. Many are having to perform more intense medical tasks, yet only 22 percent receive training.

With these trends in mind, a group of local senior care professionals established the Senior Care Solutions Team to offer a series of educational programs on senior caregiving.

Now, the Senior Care Solutions Team is transitioning to become the Kansas City chapter of Adult Children of Aging Parents. ACAP is a nonprofit organization that supports adult children navigating the challenges of caring for their aging parents.

Ron Braun, a certified senior advisor with CarePatrol of KCMO, was the first of the group to become familiar with the ACAP program. Through ACAP, the group has organized the educational series for this year, scheduled for every third Thursday of each month on a different topic related to senior caregiving.

“There’s more of a focus on those caregivers rather than before we were focused on senior care professionals,” Braun said.

David Knott of ArchWell Health helped Braun transition the Senior Care Solutions Team into a new chapter of ACAP. He says they had noticed a growing audience of caregivers at their programs as fewer seniors showed up.

The connection to ACAP has provided the group with a wealth of curated topics and presenters that it previously lacked access to. It’s a free monthly education program with a complimentary lunch for anyone who wants to learn about the challenges of caregiving. There will be an additional meeting at noon on October 2 to review changes to Medicare enrollment for this year.

The first ACAP presentation for September was given by Valerie Johnson, a certified senior advisor and program manager for the Alzheimer’s Association, who spoke about responding to challenging behaviors associated with Alzheimer’s and other dementias.

“We have to remind ourselves that these behaviors are not the person. This is the brain misleading the individual,” Johnson said.

“We have to remember that it’s a disease that is causing the neurons, the nerve cells, to break down, and they’re not communicating the way they should. These changes make it very difficult for them to make sense of their environment.”

As she finished the presentation, audience members raised their hands for questions. Many of the questions were about specific situations that people were facing in their lives.

One woman asked how to get a brother and sister back together after the sister, in the early stages of dementia, was suspicious that he was taking things from her. This is a common situation in cases of dementia. Johnson and other professionals advised taking the person with dementia’s concerns seriously to address their emotional needs.

“It’s very important, not to allow yourself to get to where they are necessarily, so try to stay at a level response and not be heightened along with that behavior,” Johnson said.

The next presentation, by Bredan Scarffe, a Medicare broker from BAC Associates, will go into detail about eligibility, coverage, and how to use federal and state resources. ACAP’s second October presentation on the 16th is about recognizing and reducing caregiver compassion fatigue. All presentations will take place at St. Joseph Medical Center in the Alex George Auditorium.

The connection to ACAP provides more speakers for curated topics. They can also do more as a nonprofit, allowing them to explore some fun new ideas.

“We started what we call a senior Make-A-Wish program,” Braun said. “One lady, her wish was to go to Las Vegas. So, we’re sending her to Las Vegas for a weekend with her family.”

As a nonprofit, businesses can contribute plane tickets or hotel stays, for example, to help make these wishes come true. Braun says they are hoping to make these senior Make-A-

Wish programs an annual tradition. They had people write in nominations for the first time, and chose the woman who wrote about her mom wanting to go to Las Vegas.

For more information on senior care and to register for future events in the series, visit acapcommunity.org.