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May 8, 2014
Caregiver support group, Healthy Aging Task Force
Present: Inez Janger, Stanley Schonbrun, Ellen McCabe , Terre Young.
The minutes of the April meeting were reviewed and accepted.
- We reviewed Mary Bethís summary of our work to date and her exploration of various websites offering information for caregivers, and recommendations we could make to the larger group. An amazing statistic Mary Beth offered was; in 2009, if caregivers were paid a nominal amount for caring for a loved on tax payer dollars would amount to over 400 billion dollars. !
- Stanley reviewed his research and reported his best find was a website for an organization called “National Family Caregiver Support Program”. Ellen collated Stan and Pollyís list and created a table of caregiverís needs. Many of these coincided with Mary Bethís work.
- The whole group will meet on May 22nd at the Hebrew Center, from 9am to 12:30. Ann Harstein, the Secretary of Elder Services for MA. Each committee will make a brief repost of their work to date, Inez will organize a presentation of our work for this meeting. She will also review our work plan and create ideas for our next steps.
During our conversations we are clear that however the groups morph into a major group or work plan, the caregiver piece will exist in one or all.
The main group coordinators, Peter Temple and Paddy Moore would like for us to help them find a volunteer who would work with them in grant writing for funding various projects that arise from these work plans and someone who could help them coordinate the work that also comes. Could be the same person or two.
Paddy is also hoping for a project from the whole groupís work to be offered to the Dukes County Health Councilís Rural Scholars program. The project will be presented to the rural scholars committee on May 13th. Pretty soon, but please have some ideas. We thought about assessing the current conditions of the homeless, housing, equitable wage and compensation, and supporting the health needs of the entire population, not just the aging.
Our next meeting will be Thursday, June 19th at 1:30 in the hospice office. We will work on the work plan and our next steps.
Respectfully submitted, Terre D. Young
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