• Direct services to care recipients often yield an indirect benefit to caregivers, and vice versa. Repairing a broken porch step into care recipient’s home improves their ability to safely enter and exit their home while also improving accessibility to the caregiver who comes to assist them. Providing respite care allows the caregiver to socialize with friends or attend scheduled appointments while the care recipient safely enjoys socialization, companionship and engagement with others.
  • Identify needed wraparound supports and resources available through your organization or other partnering community organizations. Issues or concerns may be raised by care recipients and/or family caregivers, as well as those identified by volunteers who engage with participants regularly. These volunteers are the eyes and ears of your organization and can provide you with insight that you may not have gathered during the intake process. Once additional needs are identified, provide a warm referral of the individual(s) to the appropriate community supports and resources. Be sure to follow up with the care recipient and family caregiver to ensure that the referral provided what was necessary to meet their needs.
  • Providing care recipients and caregivers with additional resources outside your local model is critical to their ability to maintain independence in the community, but you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Develop a list of local resources that you can provide to individuals either as needed or in an onboarding packet. Update the list regularly. Provide training to your volunteers on the types of resources offered by organizations in your community to assist them in identifying additional recipient needs.
  • Self-care is valuable to caregivers, care recipients and volunteers. One method of self-care is the identification of four pleasant activities to perform every day for yourself that ‘fill you up.’ Maybe it is taking ten minutes for meditation or meeting a friend for a cheerful conversation. Once you identify activities ‘fill you up,’ then identify the barriers that might prevent engagement in those activities and implement strategies to remove those barriers. If you can’t find time to meditate during the day, maybe try to do it first thing in the morning. If your friend is not free for lunch to talk, maybe you can meet for a quick cup of coffee.
  • Respite care is often an invaluable support to family caregivers as it can help relieve stress, restore energy, and promote balance. Offering respite services in coordination with other caregiver supports such as coaching and consultation, support groups, caregiver education, dementia screening and social engagement can make a positive difference for caregivers and care recipients. This kind of service offering provides caregivers with an opportunity to participate in programming while their loved one is engaged in activities with other volunteers. Ongoing coaching visits with social workers can help caregivers determine what additional support services may be needed. Participation in peer support groups allows caregivers to share valuable resources with others and talk about what has worked for them and what hasn’t.
  • When providing mentor/mentee programs in which the volunteers are current experienced caregivers supporting less experienced caregivers, monitoring the volunteer to ensure that their mentoring duties do not become too much to manage in addition to providing care to their loved one may be necessary.
  • Caregivers cannot always leave their loved one to attend programs. Consider offering hybrid/virtual/asynchronous opportunities for those who can only attend virtually as well as in person respite if they choose to bring their family member with them.
  • Volunteers are your eyes and ears in the community. Encourage them to notify you if they observe that additional support services are needed for their family caregiver and care recipient. This will help you meet the needs of your participants more effectively.
  • Having the care recipient’s emergency documentation in one place can be helpful to the volunteer and the family caregiver. Consider assisting the family caregiver and care recipient in developing a binder which can be updated as needed with new information that is valuable to those providing care and assistance.
  • Family members and family caregivers are often seeking social outlets themselves. They may arrive early to pick up their family member from a group activity, simply to connect with others and perhaps catch a glimpse of the activities the group is enjoying. Consider designing programs in which the caregiver is fully included.
  • Family caregivers seldom need only one method of support or assistance. They often can benefit from peer support, education, and/or individual caregiver counseling as well. Organizations offering a variety of programming that meets multiple needs of the caregiver become familiar and trusted partners in their caregiving experience.
  • Many older adults miss medical appointments even with assistance from a curb-to-curb transportation model. Providing that extra level of individualized support through door through door volunteer chaperone assistance can make a dramatic difference. When the volunteer is providing a phone call the day before the appointment, arriving prior to the transportation provider and supporting the individual from inside their home to the waiting area for the medical visit they make a tremendous difference to those care recipients and family caregivers participating in this type of model.
  • In some communities and cultures, multigenerational households are very common. When assisting an individual in a multigenerational household, it is also important to anticipate the needs of the other household members as well.