Getting Some Extra Help

February 20, 2006

Speaker: Kay Vanags, Aging Resources of Central Iowa

Kay discussed a little of her own background. She got into this business because she has had personal and family experiences with a family member who had Alzheimers Disease.  She works as a resource person now for Aging Resources, specifically with the Iowa Family Care Givers Program.  This program serves Polk County and the 7 surrounding counties, and started 5 years ago.  The purpose of the Iowa Family Care Givers Program is to support families who are in need of support.  Families of a person 60 years of age or older are eligible to receive assistance.

Care giving in the 21^st  century is different than before:

• People live longer
• Families more mobile
• Families blended
• More single parent households
• More women working outside of the home

Family care giving (providing care for aging parents, ill children or chronically ill family members) :

• Families provide the majority of long term care for ailing family members, but how they are providing it is changing
• Family care giving involves 14 million workers, 75% of whom are women
• Family care giving consumes more than 17.9 hours per week

Family Care Giver Program:

• Funding comes from the Federal Agency on Aging provided through Older Americans Act in 2001, and is routed through the Iowa Department of Elder Affairs
• Iowa Department of Elder Affairs distributes the money through the 13 Area Agencies on Aging. For Central Iowa, that is Aging Resources of Central Iowa.
• The idea is to “share the care” of Iowa’s elderly

The Family Care Giver Program offers 3 primary services:

• Awareness: increasing awareness of services available to families and helping to connect them to resources
• Education:  how to care of a family member with dementia. Education is one to one or in small groups
• Planning:  Counseling families, Assisting families in determining needs for supplemental services and planning how those services can be delivered and paid for.  Done through visits with the family at the family home, answering questions and determining needs together.

The Family Care Giver Program has received funding to assist families with

• respite care and
• assistance with the acquisition of equipment to facilitate the care of the family member.

There are not a lot of requirements, conditions or stipulations for accessing the funds.  There are no financial need statements to be completed, few restrictions, other than someone being served in the family must be 60 years of age or older.

Respite is an extremely important component of Family Care Giving

Resistance to respite care is normal on the part of the primary caregiver.

Barriers to using respite care:

• Concerns about brining a stranger into the home
• Security of one’s possessions
• Fear of a strange person not being accepted by the family member with Alzheimers Disease.

The Family Care Giver Program overcomes these concerns because:

• Funds can be used to pay a family member, church member,  or friend of the family (persons known to the person with Alzheimer’s Disease) for providing care giving and respite services. 
• Funds can be used to pay for the care giver’s time up to $10 per hour or gas money for the care giver.
• Funds can also be used to help fund Adult Day Services in a shared cost manner
• Funds can also be used for the acquisition of equipment (door alarms, monitoring equipment, medicine dispensers, medical equipment, etc), or transportation costs

Using Respite Care allows the family care giver to become refreshed

• Recommended 2 to 3 hours at a time, 2 to 3 times a week

It is better to begin incorporating respite care now or early in the process of family care giving, and to start by piecing it together.  It allows the family member to stay at home longer, and allows the care giver to be healthier themselves.  This is preferable to waiting until the care giver is exhausted and reaches a crisis situation when there is no other alternative than to put the family member in a nursing home.

Grieving loss is a normal part of the process, and it is a long and ongoing process.

Web-site for Family Care Givers Program and Aging Services of Central Iowa is:

www.iowafamilycaregiver.org

Additional services might be available through Elderly Waiver program.  This program helps pay for some services, but there are both medical and financial guidelines attached.  It will pay up to $1052 per month for qualified recipients, and can be used for services coming into the home and for case management services to work with the family.

Iowa Family Care Givers will have a 6-week series of classes coming up, 2 hours per week, focused on skills for the care giver.  The program is titled Powerful Tools for Caregivers.  Watch for more information about this series of classes.

Other Good resources:

Reading:  The Long Goodnight: My Father’s Journey into Alzheimers by Daphne Simpkins.