Empowering Caregivers

This third edition includes two data gathering tools, the 'Brief Daily Life Activities Pre-Guide Checklist' (Abbreviated: 'Brief DLA Pre-Guide Checklist) and the 'Daily Life Activities Guide' (Abbreviated: 'DLA Guide') designed to assist caregivers to develop a greater understanding of how the person they are caring for are able to manage their daily activities and tasks. The 'Brief Daily Life Activities Pre-Guide Checklist' determines which one of the five or a combination of two Allen's Cognitive Level forms, are to be included in the booklet - 'DLA Guide'. This booklet, once the appropriate information on one or two levels have been selected, can be given to the primary caregiver to follow-up the relevant instructions by checking (ticking) the bodily behavior the caregiver noticed. Once completed the information provides a 'snap shot' of the 'best ability to function' of the person with deficits in functional cognition. The 'Daily Life Activities Guide' is an extended version of the 'Brief Daily Life Pre-Guide Activities Checklist' and has been developed using five separate cognitive level forms based on the work of Allen and her colleagues. Further, it provides a valuable source of information for healthcare professionals and assists them with the development of care and treatment plans for the person with deficits in functional cognition. The 'Brief DLA Pre-Guide Checklist' and the 'DLA Guide' together with the 'Advanced Lifestyle Directive' will empower caregivers with a sense of self-efficacy as they are included in the information gathering process and the development of care plans. Realistically, not every person with deficits in functional cognition has a family or other informal caregivers available to provide the required information. Therefore, it is important healthcare professionals consult with care assistants who assist a person with deficits in functional cognition with their daily life activities. Observations described by many care assistants will assist in providing functional everyday information to develop a realistic care and treatment plan.

"Written for Healthcare Clinicians working in the Tertiary, Primary and Community Care Sectors providing them with three data gathering tools, which, in turn, give informal caregivers a sense of self-efficacy."--Frontcover.

Caring for an older family member with physical or cognitive impairments is a difficult, strenuous process. Caregivers often struggle to balance their own needs with those of the care recipient. Their relationships with family, friends, coworkers, and even the care recipient can suffer as well. As a result, family members often seek professional help to guide them through the caregiving process. This book presents Caregiver Family Therapy (CFT), a systems approach to treating families that care for an aging adult. CFT consists of three core stages: Identifying the problem Structuring caregiver roles Ensuring caregiver self-care Transition stages bridge one core stage to the next, helping caregivers structure care for the older adult, examine the impact of caregiving role structures, and consider broader effects of caregiving. As new challenges arise, the stages are repeated and the CFT process begins anew. Full of rich clinical examples, this book will help therapists and other service providers meet the complex, diverse needs of caregiving families.

Taking responsibility for the healthcare, safety, and financial affairs of our parents as they near the end of their life is an immense undertaking and comes with challenges, logistics, and stresses that we don’t always know how to navigate. We want to provide the best care we can and make the right decisions for our parents, but we need tips, tools, and education around this and help and encouragement as we do it. The Empowered Caregiver is a pocket support guide specifically designed to provide you with strategies and solutions for caring for your aging parents. It offers useful interventions to frame your thinking, help you manage difficult situations, and reduce your stress as your parents decline and need greater assistance. In this book, you’ll find quick ideas that you can immediately apply, easy-to-view lists, scripts to use for tough conversations, examples of questions to ask doctors and lawyers, and other resources, all rooted in author Linda Fodrini-Johnson’s deep understanding of aging and life transitions and her 30+ years as a therapist, counselor, and certified geriatric care manager. It’s organized by topic, so you can quickly flip to the information you need most, and it covers all aspects of eldercare, answering questions you didn’t even know you had with compassion and experience. Whether you’re an adult child whose parents are aging, an eldercare beginner who doesn’t know where to start, someone who is emotionally impacted by the decline of a loved one, a family member of an elder with dementia, or someone seeking expert advice on how to handle their parents’ affairs, this book will empower you with the insights, advice, and support you need. The Empowered Caregiver is an essential companion you can keep at your side and a must-read for anyone with aging parents. You’ll learn how to improve life for your parents, your family, and yourself.

Family engagement varies in education literature and often includes collaboration, involvement, and partnership. The term “family in schools” has changed to include extended family members such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins, and others who interact with the child, such as step-parents, caregivers, and neighbors. Family engagement is a practice, an interactive process, and a goal-oriented relationship involving professionals and families, allowing families to share their perspectives about their children, their learning, and their customs to improve their children's education. Advocating and Empowering Diverse Families of Students With Disabilities Through Meaningful Engagement provides the knowledge, skills, and dispositions for effective engagements of all families with children in special education. With recent changes in student population diversity among those enrolling in special education, the diversity of family compositions in the school system is also evolving. Covering topics such as laws and legal infrastructure, special education, and family engagement, this book is ideal for classroom teachers, administrators, researchers, and students in education programs.

This book provides a unique analysis of provider-, environment-, client-, and societal-based obstacles to the empowerment of frail elderly persons in a philosophical framework of social values, as well as an applied framework wherein a variety of international case studies by a distinguished board of contributors provide concrete examples of the feasibility of achieving real empowerment. Empowerment means different things to different people in the context of housing, health, and social service delivery. This book analyzes the various definitions of the concept and practice of the empowerment of frail older persons and then discusses the definitions in a philosophical framework of social values regarding aging and the older person. Each chapter demonstrates the feasibility of achieving increased empowerment of older persons, even those with severe physical or mental disability. True empowerment of older persons in every country requires time, energy, money, and commitment to the goal. This book will be of interest to academic as well as professional audiences in areas of Gerontology, Psychology, Sociology, and Family Studies. Caregivers and policymakers will also find this analysis useful.

Informal caregivers - family members, friends, and other loved ones - are an essential, uncompensated and significantly burdened extension of the healthcare team. Rapid advances in cancer care, including new drugs and immunotherapies and more sophisticated diagnostic tools, have markedly improved the ability to medically extend lives and enhance survival. As patients are living longer, with today's shorter hospital stays and shift towards increased outpatient care, however, the demands placed on all caregivers and their needs have substantially increased. Cancer Caregivers reveals the field of Psycho-Oncology's exploration of the depth of complexities of caregiving experiences and identifies the vast expanses left to be understood. This text describes the characteristics and experiences of cancer caregivers based on their life stage, relationship to the patient, and ethnic group membership, as well as patients' disease and treatment type. It highlights the significant progress in research focused on the development and dissemination of psychosocial interventions for cancer caregivers, and includes in-depth case studies to illustrate their delivery and application. The text also explores the provision of support to caregivers in the community and the legal and ethical concerns faced by caregivers throughout the caregiving process. Cancer Caregivers offers both fundamental and practical information and is the essential resource for all healthcare professionals who work with patients and families facing cancer.