In the News

Aging U.S. Population to Cause Home Care Worker Shortage

Among experts, concern is mounting over an expected home-care worker shortage. There will be a dramatic increase in America's elderly population as the baby boomers age over the next few decades, and the requisite caregivers—an estimated one million additional by 2017, and three million additional by 2030—are simply not there. Part of the shortage can be attributed to a lack of formalization in this labor sector: According to the AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, home care workers on average received less than $10 per hour in 2005, and 25 percent lacked health insurance. Adding to the problem, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in a recent ruling that federal minimum wage and overtime laws do not apply to home care workers.

Gerry Hudson, a vice president of the Service Employees International Union, emphasizes "how unprepared we are to care for the millions of seniors who will want to live at home instead of institutions," according to the AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "If we are to avert a home-care crisis, we must invest in living wages and health care coverage."

Many states are already moving to do just that, launching programs to provide them with health insurance and offer them training programs at local colleges. But the experts are still concerned: "We're facing a historic demographic change, and we do not have an adequate, well-trained work force-- from doctors down to basic in-home caregivers-- who know the details of aging," said Robert Butler, president of the International Longevity Center-USA. Read More

Nursing Home Placement Associated with Accelerated Cognitive Decline in Alzheimer's Disease

A new study suggests that people with Alzheimer's disease tend to undergo an acceleration in the rate of cognitive decline after being placed in a nursing home, unless they have already been involved in adult day care by the time of placement. The research at Rush University Medical Center involved 432 older Alzheimer's patients who lived in the community at the beginning of the study; over the course of the study, 155 of them were placed in nursing homes. The results were published in the June issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

The participants completed cognitive tests every six months for up to four years. On average, cognition declined at a gradually increasing rate for all participants. Nursing home placement, as might be expected, was associated with a lower level of cognition; but those patients who entered nursing homes also tended to have a more rapid cognitive decline after placement. However, those who had previous adult day care experience were less likely to experience this accelerated decline, and the more experience they had, the better they fared, to the point that those using day care at least three to four days a week showed no increased decline upon placement. "The findings suggest that experience in day care may help individuals with Alzheimer's disease make the transition from the community to institutional residence," said study author Robert S. Wilson, Ph.D., a neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center. Read More

Family Caregiver Issues Highlighted in USA Today and ABC News

Between June 25 - 29, 2007, USA Today ran twenty articles that featured family caregivers' personal stories and highlighted a range of issues related to caregiving, including financial matters, caregiver burden and stress, balancing work and caregiving, legal issues and the various types of community and residential care. Family Cargiver Alliance's Program Director, Donna Schempp, and Communications Manager, Bonnie Lawrence, were quoted in various articles discussing the challenges caregivers face and the types of support they need. ABC News also broadcast stories related to employers helping working caregivers, devices that help seniors stay independent and one family's struggle with Alzheimer's disease. Read More

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