National Alliance for Caregiving

We Need to do a Better Job Caring for 40 Million Family Caregivers

Family caregivers are invisible. Those children, spouses, or other relatives who provide personal assistance to loved ones with physical or cognitive limitations are often taken for granted or even ignored. But without them, our system of long-term supports and services would collapse. Frail elders and younger people with disabilities would get sicker. Hospitalizations would increase. Medicare and Medicaid costs would [...]

By |2015-07-27T10:15:34-04:00July 27th, 2015|family caregivers|4 Comments

A New Snapshot of America’s 44 Million Family Caregivers: Who They Are and What They Do

A landmark new study paints a dramatic picture of family caregivers: Nearly 44 million adults in the US are providing personal assistance for family members with disabilities or other care needs. That’s more than one out of every six adults. More than 34 million care for frail elders and nearly 4 million help children with disabilities. About 6.5 million care [...]

By |2015-06-04T07:39:10-04:00June 4th, 2015|family caregivers|2 Comments

How Can Technology Help Family Caregivers?

For well over a decade, we’ve been tantalized by digital technology’s potential to assist family caregivers. They surely could use help managing the enormous challenges of caring for a loved one.  And enterprising technologists could get very rich creating the right gizmos. Yet, while digital tech has profoundly changed the rest of our lives over the past few decades, it has [...]

By |2014-07-16T14:49:13-04:00July 16th, 2014|family caregivers, Technology|2 Comments

A Portrait of Family Caregivers in Black and White

In a recent survey, The Washington Post asked white women and black women about their outlook and priorities when it comes to issues such as money, religion, and marriage. And in many cases, they found very big differences. But when it came to one issue, there was no disagreement at all.  You guessed it: Caregiving. Nearly two-thirds of both African-American and white women worried about family [...]

Occupy Elder Care: Why Caregivers are Bad Advocates

Why are caregivers for the elderly such bad advocates? There are 40-60  million Americans caring for loved ones yet their needs are widely ignored by the political system.  Thus, politicians rarely rouse themselves to do much to help, and when budget-cutting time comes, what little assistance there is often ends up on the block. The inability of caregivers to organize politically was a major topic of [...]

By |2011-12-07T20:45:42-05:00December 7th, 2011|Aging, family caregivers, long term care reform|3 Comments

The State of Caregiving in the U.S.

When I was caring for my parents, I thought what I was doing was both the hardest thing I had ever done and the most rewarding. Now, an important new study suggests I was not alone. The study, called Caregiving in the U.S., is an important snapshot of what life is like for those providing assistance to aging parents, as well as young adults [...]

By |2009-12-08T19:23:11-05:00December 8th, 2009|family caregivers|0 Comments