by Patty Jenkins
The Ventura Parkinson’s Disease Support Group and the Camarillo Health Care District welcome all Caregivers and their Care-Partners to join us in observance of National Family Caregivers month on Wednesday, November 14h from 1 to 3pm at the Lexington Assisted living; 5440 Ralston, Ventura. We hope to help raise awareness of the challenges family caregivers face, help find solutions, support, and celebrate the efforts of all “family caregiver superheroes”!
Blair Craddock MPH, Care Services Director of the District and Mary Wiggins, Health Promotion Coach of the Case Management Department, will be sharing information to help “Supercharge your Caregiving” – the 2018 theme for National Family Caregivers Month, Caregiver Action Network (CAN).
In 2013, about 40 million family caregivers in the U.S. provided an estimated 37 billion hours of care to an adult with limitations in daily activities. Imagine how much those figures have increased since then! Family caregivers are an essential part of the social, health, and economic fabric of the U.S. long-term care
infrastructure. But family caregiving often comes at substantial costs to the caregivers themselves, to their families, and to society. Without family-provided help, the economic cost to the U.S. health and long-term services and supports systems would skyrocket. The value of services the family caregivers provide for “free” when caring for older adults is estimated to be as high as $470 billion a year. That is over twice as much as is actually spent on homecare and nursing home services combined! (Stats from National Alliance for Caregiving and Evercare. March 2009 & AARP 2015).
All area Parkinson’s Support Group members and their Care-Partners/Caregivers and those who are in the Caregiving field who would like to add their information to our ‘resource table’ of handouts, are welcome to join the Ventura Parkinson’s Disease Support Group.
There is a drop-off/loading and unloading driveway in the front of their building. Extra parking is graciously available across the street from the Lexington in the Baptist Church parking lot. Please check in at the front desk for directions to the 3rd floor and sign-in at the meeting. Thanks to the generosity of the Lexington Assisted, we are able to have our meetings every second Wednesday of the month (we take December off). We are an independent and volunteer-organized group, not affiliated with or a part of any other organization or group. For more information, call Patty at 805-766-6070.
