As I continue to build our content, I’ll add links to additional resources to support the various needs you may have while traveling the Boomer Continuum™. If you know of something awesome you’d like to see added to the list—please let me know!
Agile Caregiving
Advocate for Mom and Dad “Advocate for Mom and Dad offers practical advice for ‘what do I do?’ and ‘where do I start?’ You will learn from the experience of others how they handled challenges on topics such as legal, financial, insurance, and caregiving issues. Each story includes links to resources the family found helpful as an effective advocate for their parents. The mission of Advocate for Mom and Dad is to build a community that helps families determine their best answers to the questions of ‘what do I do?’ and ‘where do I start?'”
Best Practice Caregiving “Best Practice Caregiving is a free online database of proven dementia programs for family caregivers. It offers a searchable, interactive, national database of vetted, effective programs that offer much-needed information and support. The database is an invaluable tool for healthcare and community-based organizations, as well as funders and policy makers to discover and share high quality programs for caregivers.”
Caregiving.com “Denise M. Brown launched CareGiving.com in 1996 to help those who care for a family member or friend. CareGiving.com features the blogs of family caregivers, weekly words of comforts, daily chats, podcasts and free webinars. Through its blog posts, podcasts and video chats, CareGiving.com holds one of the largest online libraries of caregiving stories. In March 2011, Denise launched CareGifters, an initiative which funds caregiving solutions, one family caregiver at a time.”
Daily Caring “When you’re struggling to care for an older adult (and stay sane), you need practical answers fast. We help you solve the frustrating day-to-day problems that make you lose your temper or keep you up at night. Today, there’s no shortage of information available to family caregivers. But who has time to dig through everything on the Internet just to find that one nugget of info that can help you? We’re here to do that digging for you. We search everywhere to find the most practical and useful tips, advice, personal stories, and resources related to caregiving and aging. Then, we boil it down to the most important points you’ll want to know.z’
Family Caregiver Alliance-National Center on Caregiving A 40 year-old organization with a mission “To improve the quality of life for caregivers and those they care for through information, services, and advocacy.” Provides a wide array of excellent resources, including FCA CareJourney™,”a secure online service for quality information, support, and resources for family caregivers of adults with chronic physical or cognitive conditions such as Alzheimer’s, stroke, Parkinson’s, and other illnesses”; and the FCA Learning Center™, “an online learning community offering information, training, classes and more” for caregivers.
GetPalliativeCare.org “Are you or a loved one living with a serious illness? Palliative Care can help. Palliative care is specialized medical care focused on relieving the symptoms and stress of a serious illness. It is appropriate at any age and at any stage, and you can have it along with curative treatment. The goal is to improve your quality of life.”
Minding Our Elders Offers an array of resources for family caregivers and their loved ones. “It is the mission of Minding Our Elders® to break the isolation of caregivers and elders and give them a voice.”
homemods.org “This web site, based at the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, is dedicated to promoting aging in place and independent living for persons of all ages and abilities. It offers training and education opportunities for professionals who wish to respond to the increasing demand for home modification services. It also serves as an information clearinghouse on home modification to equip professionals and consumers with a comprehensive inventory of resources such as a National Directory of Home Modification and Repair Resources.”
Disability Travel
If you have a disability and would like to travel, there are many wonderful resources available to help you do it. The following list offers just a few, and I’ll continue to add to it as I discover more.
American Heart Association: Travel and Heart Disease
Amtrak Accessible Travel Services
U.S. Department of State-Bureau of Consular Affairs
Disabled World Travel: Accessible Disability Travel Information
Disabled World Travel: Accessible Disability Travel Information Document List
Guidelines for Flying with Heart Disease
How to Travel with Heart Disease
Tips for Traveling With Medical Oxygen By Car, Bus, or Airplane
Travel Contract Enables Hospice Patient to Visit Family
Transportation Security Administration (TSA): Disabilities and Medical Conditions
Traveling with Congenital Heart Disease
Graceful Aging
Medishare Christian Sharing Ministry: If you’re a Christian looking for an additional option for healthcare coverage, Medishare might be the solution you’re looking for. Dave and I have been members since 2011 and have been very happy with what they offer. And yes, this is a referral link, so we get a little monetary reward if you use it to sign up. 🙂
Peaceful Dying
Advance Directive for Dementia: “A simple way to document the medical care you would want if you had dementia.” Includes a free download of the Advance Directive for Dementia form.
Aging with Dignity Includes information about the Five Wishes living will.
American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) Includes general information about advance directives.
Caresearch Based in Australia—”Death and dying will affect all of us. CareSearch provides trustworthy information about palliative care for patients, carers and families as well as for the health professionals providing their care. Just as trustworthy information can help patients and families understand what is happening and make decisions, research evidence helps clinicians provide the best possible care.” Offers Dying2Learn, “…a Massive Open Online Course that is looking at death and dying in a different way.”
GetPalliativeCare.org “Are you or a loved one living with a serious illness? Palliative Care can help. Palliative care is specialized medical care focused on relieving the symptoms and stress of a serious illness. It is appropriate at any age and at any stage, and you can have it along with curative treatment. The goal is to improve your quality of life.”
National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s (NHPCO) CaringInfo (website) Includes general information and free state-specific advance directive forms that you can download.
National POLST Paradigm (website) Includes detailed information about Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST), as well the status of each state regarding its use of POLST.
PREPARE for your care: Aims to help make medical decision making easier for people and caregivers. Includes free state-specific advance directive forms in both English and Spanish that you can download.
The Conversation Project “Dedicated to helping people talk about their wishes for end-of-life care. Too many people are dying in a way they wouldn’t choose, and too many of their loved ones are left feeling bereaved, guilty, and uncertain. It’s time to transform our culture so we shift from not talking about dying to talking about it. It’s time to share the way we want to live at the end of our lives. And it’s time to communicate about the kind of care we want and don’t want for ourselves. We believe that the place for this to begin is at the kitchen table—not in the intensive care unit—with the people we love, before it’s too late.Together we can make these difficult conversations easier. We can make sure that our own wishes and those of our loved ones are expressed and respected.”