New center provides care for caregivers
Foundation for Senior Living trains, tends to seniors’ helpers

By Ambria Hammel, The Catholic Sun
May 3, 2007

Family members and medical professionals who care for the elderly and other disabled adults now have a new place where the support extends beyond the patient.

The Foundation for Senior Living’s Caregiver House — 1201 E. Thomas Road in Phoenix — serves as a hands-on training facility and resource center where caregivers, home designers and contractors can learn how to create a safe and more independent living environment for disabled adults and seniors.

“You prepare for babies coming home much more so than you do for the disabled coming home,” said Linda Adams Martin, the foundation’s vice president.

Martin said people often place disabled and elderly family members in care facilities because their home is not equipped to meet the person’s changing needs. She surmises that the lack of training and support for caregivers leads to rapid burnout.

“I know the system and I was exhausted,” admitted Guy Mikkelsen, president and CEO of the Foundation for Senior Living. He recently spent a month making temporary care arrangements for his 90-year-old father and his wife.

High burnout rates among family and professional caregivers led the foundation to expand its one-room caregiver operation to a 3,800-square-foot renovated home facing its Phoenix headquarters. The house, a community-wide project, is a public place where family and professional caregivers can receive training and spiritual support beginning May 7. 

“It responds to concrete needs faced by the elderly and disabled,” Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted said of the Caregiver House. He blessed each room in a private ceremony April 27.

He added that the house’s training model helps patients stay safely and securely at home and maintain a high quality of life.

Becoming better caregivers

The home features three key areas. The first includes a typical bedroom, bathroom and kitchen that shows the common mobility limitations and safety hazards the disabled often face. The other side of the house features wider halls and doorframes plus an improved version of each room built to universal design standards.

Susan Kilby, the foundation’s director of training, said family caregivers often don’t know what products are available to help the patients in and out of bed, in the bathroom and in the kitchen.

“They’re venturing into uncharted territory,” she said.

An incident sometimes propels family members into the caregiver role leaving them feeling alone.

“Oftentimes, family members don’t even know the questions to ask,” said Bonnie Danowski, who, 36 years later, still cares for her husband who has multiple sclerosis.

She also serves as the state representative for the National Family Caregivers Association and said that 80 percent of the care provided in Arizona — for nearly a half million patients — is by family members.

That’s why the caregiver house’s third key area, the training classroom, is there to help.

Kilby will hold regular instruction for family members and professionals. She hopes to offer teleconference and Web-based classes in the future.

For now, students will gather in the Caregiver House and practice helping patients sit up in bed and transfer to a walker or wheelchair in the bedroom, transfer to an elevated toilet in the bathroom and use a shower that allows wheelchair-bound patients to roll into the stall.

Danowski had a roll-in shower installed several years ago. It also features a handle that slides up and down depending on who is using it. She said her husband likes the increased independence it has brought him and the decreased fears of falling.

Family caregivers can accommodate patients who still prefer taking baths like Martin’s 90-year-old mother by introducing the walk-in tub that features a door. Once it’s closed, the patient draws the water.

“So you have the ability to be able to take a bath and the safety,” Martin said.

Visitors can’t see a real sample of the tub, but can shop for such models and other adaptive products for all rooms of the home on a special computer system set up throughout the Caregiver House. They can also browse the resource library.

In the kitchen, students will find a pedal-operated sink and raised dishwasher so patients in wheelchairs don’t have to bend low to reach the bottom rack. They will also find an elevated flowerbed in the backyard to help the elderly and disabled maintain their love of gardening.

Kilby also noted that the house “is going to be a good training lab for the paraprofessionals.”

The Foundation for Senior Living hopes to standardize the curriculum into a certification program because that kind of training will help retain workers.

A report released by the foundation this month recognized the documented shortage of qualified paraprofessional caregivers who struggle to look after a growing senior population. It cites low wages and limited education and training as some of the causes.

“We’re trying to give people self-esteem and a career path,” Mikkelsen said.

The Caregiver House is a step toward that goal.

For more information, call (602) 285-1800. Ask for Linda or Susan.