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Caregiver Assessment Parts I & II

Caregiver Assessment I: Why and What Should We Assess? (Part 1 of a 2-part series; Part 2 down below)

This webinar took place on June 20, 2012.

As a follow-up to the Caregivers Count Too! Report prepared by the National Center on Caregiving of Family Caregiver Alliance, this is the first of two webinars which focus on the importance of the caregiver assessment as an instrument and a process to better identify caregivers’ needs and form the foundation for an appropriate plan of care.

The session covered:

  1. Who, What, Why, When, Where and How Aspects of Assessments;
  2. Relevant Assessment Domains;
  3. Voice From the Field: A Family Consultant’s Perspective; and
  4. Updates on Caregiver Assessment Instruments – Where Do We Go From Here?

Speakers
Carol J. Whitlatch, PhD, is Assistant Director of the Margaret Blenkner Research Institute of The Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Whitlatch has been PI or Co-PI on a variety of federal and foundation grants examining family caregiver interventions, health care choice and decision making in families with chronic conditions and dementia, and autonomy and functioning in diverse caregiving families. She holds adjunct appointments at Case Western Reserve University at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences and as Associate Professor of Sociology. Dr. Whitlatch is Associate Editor of Dementia: The International Journal of Social Research and Practice, and on the Editorial Boards of Generations and Aging & Mental Health.

Christina Irving, MSW is a Family Consultant with the Bay Area Caregiver Resource Center in San Francisco, California. She received her Master of Social Work degree from San Jose State University. She has been with Family Caregiver Alliance for 6 years, conducting in-home, caregiver assessments, teaching classes, making presentation on topics which include understanding dementia and self-care, and providing individual, supportive counseling to family caregivers in their various caregiving roles.


Caregiver Assessment II: Practice Considerations for System Change (Part 2 of a 2-part series)

This webinar took place on August 23, 2012.

The session covered:

  1. The identification of key challenges in expanding assessment to include the caregiver as well as the care recipient
  2. The challenges of balancing needs, using clinical judgment, and administering a structured caregiver assessment
  3. Addressing practical issues in the administration of caregiver assessment tools (e.g., privacy, addressing caregiver resistance, and multiple response set)
  4. Voice From the Field: A Family Consultant’s Perspective
  5. The challenges of moving toward outcome-driven assessments in the larger system

Speakers
David W. Coon, Ph.D., is Associate Vice Provost for Health Solutions, and Professor and Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust Faculty in the College of Nursing & Health Innovation at Arizona State University. In the past, Dr. Coon served as the Associate Director of the Older Adult & Family Center of the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and Stanford University School of Medicine and Research Scientist at UCSF/Mt. Zion Institute on Aging in San Francisco. He has directed several intervention projects focused on midlife and older adults and family caregivers, with an emphasis on programs serving diverse populations. Dr. Coon’s work has been funded through federal, state, and foundation grants. His work appears in variety of scientific journals including The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, The Gerontologist, the American Journal of Psychiatry; and the Annals of Internal Medicine. He also served as the lead editor of Innovative Interventions to Reduce Dementia Caregiver Distress and is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.

Jo T. McCord, is a Family Consultant with the Bay Area Caregiver Resource Center (CRC) in San Francisco, CA. She received her Master of Arts in Gerontology degree from San Francisco State University. She has been with Family Caregiver Alliance for 13 years, conducting in-home, caregiver assessments, teaching classes, making presentations on topics which include understanding dementia and self-care, and providing individual, supportive counseling to family caregivers in their various caregiving roles.