I’ve recently worked with human resource (HR) leaders from a range of organizations to strengthen their internal support for employees with family caregiving responsibilities at home. It’s gratifying to see caregiving emerge as an area of focus for many employers, but it is also something that has become a business necessity.  Major demographic and generational [...] Read More... from Supporting at Home Caregiver Employees The post Supporting at Home Caregiver Employees first appeared on Caregiving Kinetics ..read more

“Am I a caregiver?” She looked at me quizzically. She had just recounted all the things she was now doing for her husband. Things she never used to do. Things he depended on her to do. Things she never imagined she’d be doing for him. She had come to a conference to hear me speak [...] Read More... from Am I a Caregiver? The Significance of Self-Identification The post Am I a Caregiver? The Significance of Self-Identification first appeared on Caregiving Kinetics ..read more

In last month’s blog post, I introduced the idea of charting your caregiving experience. You can do this by creating a crude X- and Y- axis graph to plot out your care receiver’s health, and corresponding caregiving intensity, over the passage of time. In this post, I’ll explain how such a graph insightfully reveals when [...] Read More... from How to Know When Caregiving Experience Requires a Change in Your Thinking The post How to Know When Caregiving Experience Requires a Change in Your Thinking first appeared on Caregiving Kinetics ..read more

I have been thinking about a Rand Corporation study[1] that sought to explain, organize, and quantify the various trajectories of chronic illness that we commonly see today. The study classified elderly people who are approaching death into three different groups: one group dies after a short period of evident decline (a typical course of death [...] Read More... from How to Chart Your Caregiving Experience: Insights on the Dynamics of Care The post How to Chart Your Caregiving Experience: Insights on the Dynamics of Care first appeared on Caregiving Kinetics ..read more

I recently delivered the keynote address at the Baltimore County Department of Aging’s Annual Caregiver Conference. The theme of the conference was “It’s All About Perspective: Caregiving Through a Different Lens,” which beautifully summarizes the approach I take when working with family caregivers. During my 90-minute presentation, the caregivers and I reviewed and discussed The [...] Read More... from From Mindset to Mindshift: The Inevitable Path of Family Caregivers The post From Mindset to Mindshift: The Inevitable Path of Family Caregivers first appeared on Caregiving Kinetics ..read more

Poetry can encapsulate something in a succinct but profound way. I wrote this poem in an attempt to capture the unique qualities of a caregiving relationship, and I wanted to share it with you. Please let me know if you can relate to these words. ____________________________________________________________ The Caregiver   I’d fix you if I could. [...] Read More... from “The Caregiver,” a Poem by Dr. Aaron Blight The post “The Caregiver,” a Poem by Dr. Aaron Blight first appeared on Caregiving Kinetics ..read more

I was recently invited to speak at a caregiver support group meeting where I talked about the Pattern of Caregiver Development. I love speaking with caregiver support groups, and I was doing my best to deliver a relatable, meaningful, and memorable presentation. From what I could tell, it seemed like the message was connecting with […] The post The Power of a Caregiver Support Speaker: How They Can Make a Difference first appeared on Caregiving Kinetics ..read more

I’ve attended caregiver support workshops all over the country. Some of them were huge events with hundreds of participants, and others were more like intimate discussions. Some included multiple presenters over the course of a day, and others were limited to a single presentation. They have been organized by colleges and universities, medical providers, local […] The post 5 Features of Great Caregiver Support Workshops first appeared on Caregiving Kinetics ..read more

As I meet with leaders of care organizations all over the country, I’ve noticed common management challenges across the various provider types. Leaders who work in acute care, long-term care, home care, senior living, and the intellectual/developmental disability sector are all facing a shortage of direct care staff as well as budgetary demands of doing […] The post How to Recognize Your Professional Caregivers Without Spending Lots of Money first appeared on Caregiving Kinetics ..read more

In response to this blog article about how caregiving changes attitudes, a support group facilitator wrote to tell me that she spent an entire session discussing the topic with her caregivers. The article notes that while each caregiving journey is unique and personal, caregivers pass through a series of attitudinal adjustments that loosely align with […] The post How Your Thinking Evolves with Caregiving Experience first appeared on Caregiving Kinetics ..read more