Caregivers

Starting on Wednesday, January 26, CMS began posting new information on the Care Compare website to help consumers better understand staffing levels and concerns at nursing home facilities that can influence the quality of care being provided to residents. Information on staff turnover and weekend staff will be posted for each facility.

States are often exploring ways to effectively support direct care workers, who are often times women, people of color, and living at or near the poverty level. This blog post explores four key recommendations for states to strengthen their direct care workforce, with an emphasis on state Medicaid agencies. The post draws from a CHCS report which focused on strategies used in the state of Michigan.

This blog post from the Better Care Playbook discusses Medicare Advantage (MA) plans that support family caregivers, specifically hightlighing UCare in Minnesota and UPMC Health Plan in Pennsylvania. The blog post explains the importance of supporting caregivers and explores the considerations around offering caregiver support as a supplemental benefit.

Access to culturally appropriate respite care can support caregivers and allow people with dementia to continue aging in place. The International Association for Indigenous Aging has announced a new Indigenous respite care toolkit that aims to help build capacity for community-based respite care. The toolkit is a collaborative effort of Morning Star Lodge, an Indigenous community-based health research lab, File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council and a community research advisory committee comprised of people from 11 First Nations communities.

The Better Care Playbook for People with Complex Needs has come out with a new collection about supporting family caregivers. Family caregivers provide care for individuals with complex health needs, including older adults, people living with dementia, and people with disabilities, and are often responsible for taking on medical tasks such as medication management, wound care, and assisting with mobility. This playbook explain what a supportive family caregiving model looks like and how organizations can implement these approaches in their work.

ACL has summarized the CDC's latest COVID-19 vaccination and booster reccomendations on their resources page. The webpage includes a section of resources for the Aging and Disability Networks and guidance for people who are immunocompromised.

Acknowledging and understanding an individual's racial and cultural identities is essential for providing person-centered supports with cultural competence. There are limited resources that directly address the intersection of culture, language, and identity with person-centered practice. The NCAPPS community has published a series of short videos that narrate how personcenteredness relates to race and culture. More videos will be released over the next several month.

USAging and the Eldercare Locator have launched the 2021 Home for the Holidays campaign. The campaign brochure, Healthy Aging in a Pandemic World: What Older Adults and Caregivers Need to Know Now, describes the changes that families, friends and caregivers may notice among themselves and the older adults in their lives. The brochure poses questions readers should ask themselves and their loved ones as we all navigate this stage of the pandemic. It also and provides information on how older adults, caregivers and families can connect to services that agencies provide to address these changes.

The Arc has annouced their new Virtual Program Library that includes free, on-demand activities for people with disabilities, their familes and service providers. The library features resources related to the arts, community and life skills, health and wellness and more.

The ADvancing States, in partnership with the National Alliance for Caregiving, created an infographic that depicts an overview of statistics on the experiences of caregivers in the United States, documenting their growing contributions to providing care to older adults and persons with disabilities in light of limited resources for caregiver services.