Thanks - I'll look them up.
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The PACE program is a program for older adults and caregivers, and it has programs such as elder care, counseling, a respite area, and financial advisers. The fee that you pay for the services is based upon income. The goal is for every community to have a program of this type. My state is behind time on this, but they are slowly getting the programs throughout the state.
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I'm confused where is your husband and why can't he get paid? If you two are taking care of her she needs to sign a power of attorney over to you and your husband to take control of her finances,bills,meds etc. If california won't pay your husband then it might be worth putting her in a nursinghome so the state will take care of her. Who controls her assets now? If your husband was able to get paid to take care of his mother then you could get a job outside the home.
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I live in California and have been care giving for my mother in law for 4 years with no pay. i started out working nights till 2am and started my day of care giving at 9 am with no day off. the economy has ruined us financially. i am no longer employed due to a lay off as well as my husband for 2 years. i have had my car reposessed and every utility i have has been shut off due to lack of funds from care giving and no employment i am not elegible for pay in the state of California i am only an in law "not a family member" what ever that means!!! i can not get paid unless my husbands family turns over over all my mother in laws assets over to the government therefore causing me to care for her for free even if we liquidated assets it would only cover 3 years of care in a senior home facility leaving the family with nowhere to live if she lived for 4 years causing the family to be homeless. and my mother in law as well as my brother in law who lives in her home with her full time left with nothing. our lives are a mess due to lack of funding and all the red tape you have to go through to help the elderly in this country. your hand are tied either way there is no solution to this problem.
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jankevin2, at least there's something. Here in CT we don't have that program. We do have an Elder Home Care program where fees are reduced (to 7 %). Although, when it's all over, I will be charged a reimbursement fee (minus whatever they decide my time caring for my mother was worth).
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I am an unpaid caregiver. I have a disabled husband and a mother with alzheimers. I work full time 50 miles from my home. My mother was in an assisted living facility but I had to remove her due to two falling accidents within 5 days. She has been over medicated as well as under medicated. She is under the community care service program. They only give 4 hrs a day to help her. I leave home at 6 AM and return at 6 PM and have to pay for extra care for her out of my income. I don't want to see my mother abused and I have no choice in the matter. I am trying to find a place that really understands an alzheimer's patient.
Broke & distressed!
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sherrisouth - what does the PACE program do? The wheels of justice move to slowly for me:)
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jankevin2 - look into a EDCD waiver - that is when you can get paid to take care of your parent/parents/child at home. Here in VA they only pay up to 30hours and my facilitator is working w/Medicare for an additional 10-15 hours of respite care a week. The wheels move incredibly slow!! Medicare cut the total hours of respite from 780/yr to 420/yr! It really makes me angry - like I need more stress right:)
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I have written to my legislators about other issues but always get some sort of letter stating that they are on our side and working towards a goal. I somehow feel it's a brush off; and get to the point where it's a waste of time sometimes. I wish living as close as I do to DC that I could attend some of these rally's. The times I have gone to DC you see people picketing the white house on different agendas and you see people who are discouraged by their efforts falling on deaf ears:(
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It's not easy being a caretaker, I used to work in a nursing home as a CNA and seen the families trying to make the decision to bring their love one home or not, I know now what they went thru. My mother broke her pelvis bone in 3 places and was in a rehab center for 3 months, but I found out that they have a low rating and sent my mother to the doctors office with no pants on not even a depends on , I called the state on them and they got fined for it. That's when I made the decision to bring my mother home, thank God , I take a course on being a nursing aide. It helps when taking care of my mother. But that report is right, it's financial hardship that is the hardest thing, but I went to work and called Health and Human Services to get help with medical supplies, sitters and a case care manager. But be careful who you get for a company to come in and sit with your family member, sometimes they don't show up and the company lies to you. So talk to a care case manager and figure out what you and your love one needs for help, for heaven sakes don't be afraid to ask questions and be up front with them to let them know what you need for help or just to get out of the house a couple days a week.
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I wrote to legislators repeatedly and recently found out that my area would be getting a PACE program in the next couple of years. Don't know if my letters made a difference, but maybe so? Of course for elderly people this is a long time to wait, but at least they are attempting to get something done. Don't give up writing to them. Members of Congress, of course, have plenty of money to give their family the very best care. Now, with budget cuts, I'm afraid that things will get worse - but let them know what it's like to need help, but can't afford it!
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Online? A Google+ circle? How did the Grey Panthers start?
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Ialso take of my mother because she is my mother. I have faught long and hard to keep her alive. She is now 90 and the doctors call er a miracle. And as far as the legislators go, I have sent many hours sending e-mails letters etc from the president on down. This will not change until the day everyone goes and stands in front of congress and let's face it, not all of us are willing to do that. I have very little time to spare I also do my mother dialyis at home her machine runs for 10 hours and many nights or actually most nights I get 2-3 hurs sleep. i am nt complaiining but the fact of the matter is us caretakers could use a break. I have no one to help me. The governments solution in this state is that if my mother were to sign over everything to them and get a medicaid waiver they would help but they want everything in the end. My mother has nothing. Just me. So I will continue to fight as I have been and maybe someday something will change.
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Karen Taylor, I am busy enough without having to be schooled in grammar, thank you very much.
And I don't believe I was responding to your post in particular anyway.
Don't mean to be rude, but....well,when other people are.......
This is all you have to do with your time - correct those of us who are up to our ears just trying to stay above water. Please!
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It seems that the govt wants our elderly in nursing facilities taking their drugs and paying their employees high dollar!! Not taking into account that our elderly are better off with people who CARE about them and not just a money cow for them to line their pockets. The pay rate should be the same because we DO more for them 24/7 not just 8 hours out of the day.
Then to hear they want to cut medicare??? WTF is wrong with this picture folks?
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You have a congressional representative, we all do if we are in the states or its possessions. Contact their local office and see if there is anything they can do for the elderly female veteran.
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30's and 40's - lose the apostrophes, It's just plural: '30s and '40s. Not possessive. I care for my Mom because she's my Mom. Any aid she's due from VA should be expedited because of her age. I'd personally like to know what is involved in processing paperwork and how many are processed daily. I was told that they were over 200,000 applicants behind. Sounds like they need help and/or a new method.
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A person who is receiving some type of government assistance cannot get paid for being a caregiver without losing a good amount of their assistance. Many people cannot afford home care workers, or a nursing home. Then you have people who cannot qualify for Medicaid. Plus, younger people worry that they will not even get any social security at all. With many families now being much smaller than they were back in the 30's and 40's the care is falling on only children or maybe two to three kids - and when only one lives nearby, guess which one has to try to get by on their own? I'm trying to look after three people - I had to just trust care for one to a nursing home. I cannot possibly do everything.
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I do not think the older people are irrelevant or without value. I personally know many older folks that contribute in many ways to society as a whole. My issue is with the younger folks that walk away and leave their elderly parents or grandparents without any support physically, financially, emotionally or any other way. This puts a lot on those that do have a caring heart for others and creates so much loneliness for those that just get dumped by their families. Some of them die alone at home just spending day after day by themselves and others die in some home where no one ever visits or even calls to check on how their parent or grandparent is getting along. We all have busy schedules and things to do but for those of us out there volunteering to visit and just spend a little time with these old folks at the end of the day it just makes you want to cry. Some times that is just how I end my day...crying because of what I have seen or heard that day.
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I was just pointing out an unjustice. By the way, let me better define "homeless by choice." Someone who is homeless due to the poor choices he/she has made that has rendered them homeless. My Mom lives with me because at her age, she can no longer function without help. My brother, on the other hand, is that homeless veteran to which I referred. Our tax dollars fund his life. He chooses to be dependant, yet the tax payers whose hard-earned dollars fund his life, have no choice. We simply pay him. Mistake, you say? I offer my WWII veteran mother compassion, a lovely home, and all that comes with it. I just found out that in order to receive her VA benefits, she should expect to wait nearly a year, while her indigent-by-shoice son had no wait. Something imbalanced there. Oh, her case could be expidited - if she were terminal.
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If the government would cut out the $383 BILLION dollars that is spent on illegal immigrates in this country there would be more money for caretakers!!! I am a caretaker and I know what it's like. However I don't get paid for it. The elderly need help and it is the governments responsibility to make sure they get it!!!
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karentaylor, your mom as a vet is entitled to VA benefits. My sister-in-law's mother was admitted to a VA hospital in either Vermont or New Hampshire - I don't recall - when she could no longer live on her own or with her children.
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My point is valid. "Old" is a state of being that varies with era. Once "old" was 40 years - or even 30 years. That nowadays it is 100 years is not relevant. Children are abused and misused and placed into poorly designed foster care in our society. Older people are dismissed both as irrelevant to the economy as well as to their value to society (at any given time in their lives). Money - either cost or income - is NOT the defining characteristic we should be concerned about (and you are not the first to make that mistake). Rather compassion and quality of every person's life should be the standard measure.

It isn't and that's why my statement is valid.
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A homeless male veteran can waltz into my town (homeless by choice) and receive instant housing, food, and medical help. My 90 year old mother, a WWII veteran needs to go into an assisted living facility, but because she's female and lives with me, it will take from 8-12 months just to process the paperwork for her to receive any financial assistance to defray the cost of assisted living. How long do they think she has!?
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PCVS,

You seem to be very thoughtful, but I think you are making a big mistake on this one.

From Wikipedia:

** Anthropologist Laila Williamson notes that "Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunter, gatherers, to high civilizations, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule." **

And as for the elderly, in Florida the cost to the government for a nursing home is $208 per day, or $76,000 per year. Meanwhile able-bodied younger people who have lost their jobs and homes due to our gross mismangement of the economy (top priority = tax breaks for the rich, corporations allowed to dictate policy, bailing out banks instead of citizens, a military budget equal to rest of the world combined, etc.) get very little. We are, in effect, turning our backs on the workers, and also cutting back on education of the next generations.

Random quotes from news sources:

- Nevertheless, huge cutbacks in school funding are now being announced at every level of public education across the U.S.

- In early November the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that, because of budget shortfalls due to the declining economy, at least 16 states were proposing to cut funding for kindergarten through 12th grade as well as early education.


So, from that perspective of socking it to the working class and our youth, $76,000 per year for the elderly is a LOT of money.

And don't forget, "our own society" includes not just the generous government money, but the contributions of the family caregivers.

Finally, past societies did not include people routinely living to age 100, so judging us in an A-B comparison to them isn't a valid point.
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A society can be judged on how it treats its infants and its elderly. What does this say about our own society?
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This is spot on correct....this article is about all of us on this site. My health is suffering from the stress of managing 24/7 care for my mom, as I have my own family. They steal food, order internet on her phone bill, make long distance calls to everywhere and then there is the "no common sense", to deal with. Imagine they have to be told to take out the trash. I guess I need to learn to let some of this just go. She was in a GREAT AL place and demanded to come home, to non-medical staffing. (she is very medical) All at home care (and I mean ALL) is non-medical...they all say: the family does that"..well then what is it that you will do?
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