By: Adele Mehta, Director of Senior Outreach & Caregiver Services
November is National Caregiver Month and one of the ways that Senior Community Services honors caregivers is to help make their lives easier through our free, web-based service, CareNextion.org. Caregivers can access a list of services by community or consult with an experienced social worker by phone, but the feature that caregivers here and throughout the country are finding most helpful is the site’s care team tool.
Fran, a caregiver for her father, mentioned that she appreciated how easy it was to set up an online care team: “I had all these people saying, ‘Let me know if I can help,’ but it seemed a lot easier to do everything myself rather than trying to get the help. By using the care team tool, I just invited those family members, friends, and even people from Dad’s congregation to join his online team, and in no time at all, I could let them all know when Dad needs any help.”
Mike lives in Seattle and appreciates the care team’s journal feature: “I know that my family in the Twin Cities provides most of the help that Mom and Dad need. I lend a hand when I’m in town and contribute some toward expenses, but I like to be part of the online team and keep up with how the folks are doing by reading the journal entries – it keeps me “in-the-loop.”
Diane reports that her family in Boston has set up a CareNextion care team to help her sister,, who lives there. “I learned about this site just before Patsy broke her hip. In a few months, she probably won’t need any outside help, but it’s a boon in the meantime. It’s great that you can use this service anywhere you have Internet access – and it’s free!”
Sam, who cares for his wife, finds the team to be an efficient way to get help: “Before CareNextion, it was a scheduling nightmare! I used to have to call around, one person after another, to see if someone was available to help Rita, but now I just post a need that goes out to our private team, and one of the people agrees to help with that task. The other good thing is, I don’t feel like I’m begging for help. For instance, just last Monday, my niece took my wife grocery shopping while I went for coffee and caught up on the latest with ‘the boys.’”
