Spring Cleaning Our Content

Our April Newsletter

Apr 17, 2021

This month we provide an update on Sage Stream as well as some of the latest news in the aging and caregiving space. It’s more a cornucopia of ideas and less a theme issue. What’s on your mind these days? Let me know and we can try to address particular issues each month.

Starting in May, you will need to be a paid subscriber to my newsletter on Substack. Hey, it's only $5 a month, $50 for the year. It's one Starbucks a day. Thanks.

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Update

Since last month, we have added new endorsers to the program and more content providers including a chef and a brewmaster. We are working on a two-week series of programs that will air on the National Association of Activity Professionals Facebook page sometime in the next few months. Also, we have become a Community Partner of the UNCC Gerontology program, providing access to students for intergenerational work as well as a platform for research projects around the effectiveness of our programs.

Caregivers Have Been Let Down By Employers

Over half of employees in a recent study have said that their employer hasn't supported them with their responsibilities at home for the first year of the pandemic. Almost the same proportion also believes that their manager doesn't truly understand how their responsibilities have changed during COVID-19.

The new report, published by the Boston Consulting Group surveyed 14,100 caregivers in the US and Europe, all full- or part-time employees of large companies.

Broken Health System Feeds Caregiver Burnout

I have been saying for some time that the hospital health system does not truly care for family caregivers beyond mandated programs. Kate Washington learned about the rigors of caregiving firsthand when her husband was diagnosed with lymphoma, and eventually returned home, still very ill, after a stem cell transplant. Washington says her burnout resulted in part from “the medical system’s unquestioning assumption that there would be a family caregiver on hand to provide fairly high level care at home.”

Washington says there’s a gap between a patient’s health status that’s too good for the hospital and too sick for home that the family is expected to fill.

New Intergenerational Program at Ovation Communities is Spot On

A Wisconsin-based senior living and care provider is organizing a teen board to teach leadership and career skills while fostering relationships with older adults.

Milwaukee-based Ovation Communities, a Jewish faith-based senior living and care provider, is launching Teen Ovation through the Jewish Home and Care Center Foundation, where the idea for the teen board originated. Ovation Communities’ intergenerational programming includes children, youth and young adults ranging in age from infants through college age.

Read more.

Few Employee Wellbeing/Caregiving Programs Are Effective

That should grab attention. And it plays well off the article about broken health systems and caregivers. U.S. employers are expanding efforts to enhance their employees’ wellbeing as they map out a benefit strategy for operating in a post-pandemic environment. These initiatives come as less than three in 10 employers say their wellbeing (29%) and caregiving (27%) programs have been effective at supporting employees during the pandemic. That’s according to a new survey by Willis Towers Watson, which also found the majority of employers cite rising stress and burnout as the number one wellbeing and mental health concern — generated by an increase in caregiving needs and a lack of social connections.

Read more in Security Magazine.

Caregiver Smile Summit -

Purchase all three Summits for $49.

Use them as a substitute for your Caregiver Conference just as Rural Resources Community Living Connections in Pullman, Washington did this year.

Sharing Stories Helps Caregivers Process - New Program Helps

Albigail Rolbiecki, PhD, an assistant professor of family and community medicine ay Missouri University, is the recipient of a $3.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct an ongoing study about interventions for family caregivers.

Rolbiecki’s study is called Caregiver Speaks, a storytelling intervention that uses photos to prompt thoughts, feelings and reactions related to a person’s experience.

Read more here.

Caregiver Experience Keeping Men at Bay

Most men say they value—and want to participate in—the unpaid caregiving work that women overwhelmingly shouldered even before the pandemic. But the majority of men don’t actually take on an equal share of caregiving responsibilities unless they already have experience doing so, according to a new report from think tank New America.