Aug

Do You Offer Elder Care Classes For Your Members

For the past few months I haven’t done much blogging. My time and energy has been focused in two directions:

Planning and organizing a workshop for family caregivers and;
launching an online store for caregivers

The workshop took place on August 15th with pretty good attendance. The speakers were excellent. The workshop was well received and there was an unexpected outcome: some of the participants suggested that I take the “show on the road.” They asked me to offer the workshop to churches. As flattered as I am that the participants thought enough of the workshop to ask that I offer it to their fellow church members, the request isn’t very practical.

The Problem

My expertise in this area lies in planning and organizing. I am neither a gerontologist nor an expert on caregiving. I have no expertise in any area of elder care and my understanding of Medicare and Medicaid is foggy at best. This means that to take the workshop to different churches, I would need a team with expertise in those areas. The gerontologist who spoke at my workshop is Carrie Springer. She is a caregiver for her 55 year old brother who has disabilities and her parents who are both in the early stages of Alzheimer’s; and she is the marketing director for an assisted living facility. Carrie is a nice lady, with a passion for caregiving, but she is not going to give up her weekends or evenings to follow me around to do workshops. Also, I am a full time caregiver for my 82 year old god-sister. I can’t devote that kind of time to an on-going project either.

The Solution

It’s simple enough for churches to host their own elder care workshops. Do your research and find your speakers: gerontologist, geriatric nurses, geriatricians, adult day care program directors, adult day care activity coordinators, elder care lawyers . . More than likely there are people in your congregation who are using elder care services or who know someone who is. Medicare plan providers such as WellCare, Humana, Advantage and others, can provide someone to explain medicare and medicaid benefits. We used WellCare of Georgia and they were glad to offer their services.

The Importance

There are 54 million family caregivers in the United States. Family caregivers are ordinary people like you and me who take care of our parents, family members or friends with little or no compensation. Approximately 30 million of these caregivers take care of parents or elderly family members, many of whom have some form of dementia. This number will only increase over the coming years because of medical advances and longer life spans.

Even though we know our family members are aging, when the time comes for us to take care of them, most of us are not prepared. Some people handle it better than others, but we could all use a little training in the area of elder care.

Please visit my blog, A Caregivers Journal for a list of caregiver resources. I hope you will begin to offer some form of elder care training for your congregation.

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