CAREGIVING

Caregiving encompasses essential people and services that enable older adults to live at home.

Interview With Dr. Donna Benton On Supporting Black Caregivers and Older Adults

To celebrate Black History Month and National Caregivers Day (February 18th), National Center on Law and Elder Rights (NCLER) interviewed Dr. Donna Benton of the University of Southern California’s Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. In this brief video interview, Dr. Benton discusses her work supporting Black caregivers, the importance of caregiving in the Black community, and strategies for advocates who wish to better support their Black older adult clients. She also talks about the need for legal assistance in advance planning and addressing issues involving housing scams in the Black community.
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Resources and Reference Materials for Community Health Workers and Chronic Disease

CHW-led interventions that focus on chronic disease management are known to have positive health outcomes for individuals and communities. In particular, research has shown that CHWs can positively influence hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and asthma. Individuals who participate in CHW-led programs have demonstrated improvements in A1C levels, increased their physical activity, improved their mental health, and have a better understanding of their conditions. CHWs are particularly effective at addressing chronic disease because they come from the communities they serve. This quality puts CHWs in the best position to provide health education that is culturally aligned and in the language of the people being served. These resources go in-depth about the positive impacts that CHW-led interventions can have on individual patients, organizations, and communities. They draw from MHP Salud’s own experience implementing and improving CHW-led programs that address chronic disease and include information on other useful resources.
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Reinforcing a Strong Foundation: Equitable Supports for Basic Needs of Grandfamilies

  • Date: December 10, 2021
  • By: user
  • Categories: CAREGIVING
There are 2.6 million children in the United States growing up in grandfamilies, meaning they are raised by relatives or family friends without their parents in the home. While grandfamilies are of all geographic locations, socio-economic levels, and races/ethnicities, Black, American Indian, and Alaska Native children are the most likely to be in grandfamilies. Grandfamilies arise out of events that separate children from their parents, such as death, including from COVID-19, substance use, incarceration, mental illness, divorce, or military deployment.
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American Indian & Alaska Native Grandfamilies: Helping Children Thrive Through Connection to Family and Cultural Identity

Both inside and outside the foster care system, American Indian and Alaska Native children are more likely to live in grandfamilies—families in which grandparents, other adult family members or close family friends are raising children with no parents in the home—than any other racial or ethnic group. Over the last few decades, drug epidemics, natural disasters and other tragedies have both created grandfamilies and challenged existing ones. The COVID-19 pandemic is the latest crisis to have elevated the needs of these families, and in particular the needs of American Indian and Alaska Native families, who are being disproportionally impacted by the pandemic. The rates of infection and death are staggering. For example, as of early May 2020 in the Navajo Nation, the mortality and infection rates are higher than the vast majority of states. This toolkit is designed to give resources and tips to child welfare agencies, other government agencies and nonprofit organizations, so they can better serve all American Indian and Alaska Native grandfamilies regardless of child welfare involvement. It will explore some unique strengths and challenges of these grandfamilies, which agencies and organizations need to recognize in order to provide culturally appropriate supportive services.
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AFRICAN AMERICAN GRANDFAMILIES: HELPING CHILDREN THRIVE THROUGH CONNECTION TO FAMILY AND CULTURE

rican American children will live in grandfamilies is more than double that of the overall population, with one in five African American children living in grandfamilies at some point during their childhood. agencies, other government agencies and nonprofit organizations, so they can better serve all African American grandfamilies. It will explore some of the unique strengths and challenges of these grandfamilies, which agencies and organizations need to recognize in order to provide culturally appropriate supportive services.
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National Alzheimer’s Dementia Resource Center

The National Alzheimer’s and Dementia Resource Center (NADRC): Funded by the Administration on Aging/Administration for Community Living (AoA/ACL), the NADRC provides expert technical assistance to AoA/ACL and it grantees on dementia-capable systems, supportive services for people with dementia and their caregivers, evidence-based caregiver interventions, behavioral interventions for people with dementia, data collection and reporting, and program evaluation.
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