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The Six Tasks of Caregiving

Sharing the Care:
A New Model for Family Caregiving

Most of us never think about what family caregiving entails until we are facing it head on. In some cases we have no foreknowledge – our caregiving responsibilities arise instantly from a loved one’s accident or tragedy such as a fall, cancer, heart attack or stroke.

In other cases, our caregiving responsibilities gradually become a more extensive part of our lives as chronic conditions mount and the process of aging takes over as with diabetes, heart or kidney disease, arthritis or dementia.

It’s important to understand that caregiving can take many forms from short term events such as a broken hip, recovery from surgery, heart attack, or cancer. Or it can be longer term; in some cases extending 5, 10 or even 20 years. And inevitably, for all of us, family caregiving will involve dealing with end of life issues.

No one can really prepare you for this process. Indeed, everyone deals with the issues differently, so you need to have a full set of tools available in your caregiving arsenal to help you cope with all the possibilities.

For example, in recent years there has been a shift in the type of care that health insurance companies will cover. The shift is toward more outpatient procedures vs. in-hospital stays.

Furthermore, among outpatient treatments there are far more options available today. As a result the individual care recipients and their families have to be involved not only with increasingly complex medical decisions, but also with the closely related legal, financial, and long term care decisions.

In addition, more and more responsibility for the maintenance of chronic conditions has been shifted to the care recipient and their family caregivers. One thing is certain, the inadequate patchwork of policies and programs for caregivers and care recipients cries out for a new paradigm or model for caregiving.

A new approach is critical if caregivers are to survive the process with spirit, health and finances intact.

In this new paradigm families and loved ones come together and Share the Care. Just as each family member has a different relationship with their parent or loved one, each person has special skills and strengths that can be a valuable part of the caregiving process.

Addressing the needs of an aging parent also often represents the final opportunity for a family to come together and share in giving back to their loved ones in ways that nurture and create shared experiences and bonds.

If you have a loved one with a chronic illness or an elderly parent, even if they seem to be in good health you need to start preparing now.

The good news is that you can easily begin to prepare for your new caregiving responsibilities because Care Giver Helper has developed the tools and technology that will help you accomplish and effectively share the numerous tasks required for effective caregiving.

Caregiving can essentially be broken down into six primary tasks: assessment, organization, planning, communication, scheduling and monitoring.

Assessment

This is the first and most basic level of the caregiving process. This is the information gathering stage.

Actually this process should take place continually as our parents begin to age. In regular visits and conversations we need to determine if they are eating properly, taking their medications, seeing their doctors when necessary. Are they losing physical abilities such as sight, hearing and mobility? Are they experiencing issues related to household chores such as cooking, shopping, driving, bathing or other daily living tasks? Are they socializing? Enjoying a hobby? Are they meeting their financial obligations?

Each sibling or family member has a different relationship with and geographical proximity to the care recipient. Therefore each sibling will have different information to share with their co-caregivers about their loved one and how that person is coping with their aging issues.

The sharing of these different views enables the family to have a more complete picture of the health and well being of their aging parent. It also reduces the level of burden placed upon the caregiver family member who lives closest to the care recipient.

Keeping abreast of our care recipient's medical, financial and social challenges definitely helps families act with foreknowledge. But in spite of our best efforts sometimes things happen that we just can't anticipate.

That is why assessment also includes determining: What is the current situation? Has there been an accident or sudden illness? Has a chronic illness just been diagnosed? What are the potential short term and long term outcomes? What are the caregiving needs: Housing? Is in-home care required? Does the family need financial, legal or medical assistance or information? In any caregiving situation, knowledge and access to resources are critical for success.

Care Giver Helper has developed 28 distinct resource communities that provide information on specific health, disease, financial, legal, safety, and insurance issues. The resource communities also provide a wealth of caregiver resources. By establishing a family community at CareGiverHelper.com, families can begin to take advantage of tools and resources designed by fellow family caregivers to ease the anxiety and confusion about caregiving responsibilities.

Organization

This phase categorizes the action steps we defined in the Assessment Phase. It's important to organize these action steps since many are time specific tasks such as: gathering information about a particular medical condition, gathering financial or legal documents, scheduling appointments, addressing errands including grocery shopping, pharmacy visits and more.

The organization of responsibilities represents an opportunity to share the tasks with family members. Although some family members might not be physically present to help with daily living activities, they can address the need for information, locating local services and programs, dealing with financial issues, and handling external communications.

The variety and number of caregiving duties to be addressed allows family members to utilize their strengths and capabilities by tackling those specific tasks for which they are best suited, due to skill, desire or proximity. By sharing in the caregiving responsibility of their loved one, pressure is reduced on all of the caregivers and improves the health and well being of both the caregivers and their care recipient.

Care Giver Helper can assist with the organization of many tasks by identifying the documents that families should have on hand; providing an easy way to track medications and dosages, medical appointments, important dates, contact information for home maintenance and repair, places of worship, friends and more.

Planning

Once the assessment of the situation is complete and the organization of tasks is in place, family members can begin to foresee needs and begin to plan for them, instead of constantly reacting to emergencies.

How do you take the car keys away from mother? CareGiverHelper's resource communities offer strategies and tips from people who have experienced this issue.

In cases of dementia there will eventually be a time that your loved one will require constant care. This can be very difficult for the "local" caregivers and absolutely must be shared with other family members, friends, and paid or volunteer in-home support. Care Giver Helper can connect you with resources to locate support before the situation becomes critical and provides a way to schedule family and paid support.

Some issues to plan for may include: Is there a "Do not resuscitate" (DNR) order in place? Is there a will in place? Does there need to be someone designated with power of attorney? How do you address end of life discussions? Answers to these questions and how to discuss them are available in the Care Giver Helper resource communities.

Together families and care recipients themselves can begin to evaluate options to address the needs that they know will come up sooner or later. Options can be evaluated for their appropriateness for the family as a whole and decisions can be made in a timely and appropriate fashion.

Communications

This is the one area where all human relationships either thrive or break down. Effective communication is essential for families that are sharing care. All members need to be kept up to date on significant developments, scheduled appointments, care responsibilities and many other matters.

Personal schedules and differences in time zones can all play havoc on the ability of family members to effectively communicate. Poor communication among caregivers can endanger the care recipient and may even lead to anger, depression and isolation among the caregivers.

CareGiverHelper enables families to create a secure community with all of their support information organized in one place: contact information of doctors, lawyers, local service providers and paid caregivers; medication and dosages; a common calendar with reminders for appointments, birthdays, anniversaries and other events.

CareGiverHelper also provides secure storage for medical, legal, financial, insurance and other pertinent documents. There are even places to store personal information about the care recipient, including favorite foods, music, television shows, hobbies, flowers, and more.

Discussions on specific topics can be posted in family forums and commented upon when it's convenient without regard for time zones and personal and sometimes hectic schedules. For example, if there are a number of treatment options for a particular condition, those options can be shared in the family community and reviewed when convenient. The family members and the care recipient can offer their opinions regarding their choices so that the entire family has input into the decision.

Other family members and/or friends can also be given access to sections of the family community that are relevant to their responsibilities and interests. For example, you may not want Aunt Millie in England to have access to the financial section but you may wish to have her participate in a family contest for the funniest vacation story.

Scheduling

Timely scheduling of tasks and appointments is critical for the health and well being of the care recipient. Care Giver Helper streamlines the scheduling process by enabling a shared calendar of events. It facilitates organization and communication between family caregivers so that scheduling is easily accomplished whether for daily activities or for long term planning.

If a sudden doctor's appointment needs to be scheduled, family members can be emailed or summoned to an online chat to determine who will be responsible for completing the task. No need to have multiple phone calls. The family caregiver who is available simply logs into the family community and accepts the task.

CareGiverHelper provides a simple and secure way to schedule home care shifts, to remind family members of events, or even to share a grocery list.

The CareGiverHelper family calendar is accessible 24 hours a day from any computer with online access. It can also be printed out and shared or even put on the refrigerator so that everyone in the household can be kept abreast of the schedule.

Monitoring

The CareGiverHelper private family community allows families to keep track of their own responsibilities and provides a mechanism to ensure that other caregivers in the family community are meeting their responsibilities as well.

It is also important to remember that caregiving is a continuum - even short term caregiving takes place over a period of time. In cases of long term caregiving it is critical to be able to monitor how the systems in place are working. Are the systems that have been put in place appropriate? If not, why not?

What can be done to improve the process? Are the tasks being seen to in a timely fashion? Are there issues that need to be discussed with medical professionals? Are there new issues that need to be addressed?

Issues that arise from monitoring the situation may lead the family caregivers back through the first five stages of caregiving until the new issue is resolved. CareGiverHelper offers the tools to manage this process and to put the family in touch with new resources if and when those become necessary. The CareGiverHelper tools provide family caregivers with a reasoned and more relaxed approach that result in improved outcomes for care recipients and caregivers alike.

Sharing the Care with CareGiverHelper

Care of the elderly and chronically ill has always been one of the primary functions of the family. In the past this role traditionally fell to women -- a wife, daughter or daughter-in-law, who now may also be juggling a career and a child still in the home. This primary responsibility burdens the caregiver, who may consequently suffer ill health or depression.

Caregiving is a complex process charged with high emotion and sometimes dire and critical needs.

Fortunately, today families have a new and easier way to address these sometimes conflicting needs by sharing the care with other family members. Sharing the care improves outcomes for the care recipient and for the caregivers by providing caregivers the opportunity to keep their lives, health and spirit intact.

Start sharing the care today and improve the quality of life for your family by establishing a CareGiverHelper family community.

co-authored by: Robert M. Zakon

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CareGiverHelper, Inc.

CareGiverHelper is an internet healthcare marketing and communications company that assists organizations build brand awareness, client loyalty and new client acquisition, through an online community for family caregivers. This web based service improves task organization and communication between family caregivers in order to assist in facilitating daily activities, emergency response and longer term planning processes. It also includes discussion and support groups that are facilitated by resource communities that each focus on a specific health related topic. The service is free of charge for non-paid caregivers and their families.

www.CareGiverHelper.com