Family Caregiving
More than 48 million family caregivers help older parents, spouses, grandparents, and friends live independently in their own homes and communities, according to AARP. These family members experience physical, emotional, and financial challenges while providing essential care and services to their care recipients. Many caregivers carry out these tasks while caring for other family members and maintaining jobs outside the home; a growing number care for a family member while living at a distance. Appreciative of the hard work and sacrifice of family caregivers, researchers at the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston are working to identify their unique needs and evaluate workable strategies to support them in their caregiving work.
Featured Research
Quality of Communication Between Family Caregivers and Direct Care Professionals
Family caregivers contribute to the quality of care older adults receive in nursing homes and assisted living communities. However, barriers within organizational systems can impede the ability of direct care professionals to establish effective and consistent lines of communication with family members. LTSS Center researchers explored and characterized how family caregivers perceive their communication with direct care professionals and how those perceptions influence the mental health of care recipients.
The Financial Challenges of Family Caregivers
Exploring the federal support policies family caregivers prefer and assessing whether those policies can reduce racial and ethnic disparities in retirement security.
Contact: Marc Cohen
Amplifying Family Caregiver Voices
Building on previous work to support caregivers by evaluating if efforts to increase the capacity of caregiving coalitions made a difference in the lives of family caregivers.
Contact: Verena Cimarolli
LDCare: An Intervention for Long-Distance Family Caregivers
Developing and testing an intervention to support burdened long-distance family caregivers of community-dwelling older adults living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
Contact: Verena Cimarolli
Quality of Communication Between Family Caregivers and Direct Care Professionals
Exploring how family caregivers perceive their communication with direct care professionals in residential care settings and how those perceptions influence residents’ mental health.
Contact: Verena Cimarolli
National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers
Listening to the needs of family caregivers, developing strategies for addressing their concerns, and bringing those concerns to the attention of national policymakers.
Contact: Pamela Nadash and Eileen Tell