Social Service Learning System - 2024 04 19

 



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The Ethical Imperative - 2023 08 13

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  The ethical imperative to reverse the negative socio-economic impacts of family caregiving are written across the Internet in tens of thousands of anguished posts written by family caregivers in high degrees of distress and hopelessness.  Family caregivers express their feelings of disempowerment, of feeling taken advantage, of feeling taken fore granted, of how their lives have been consumed by caregiving responsibilities and they cannot see a future for themselves.  The work they do is untraceable, there is no authoritative oversight. The work they do is unaccounted, the time and energy they put into caregiving is not recognized as employment.  They find themselves in an impossible dilemma - they cannot, in good conscience, leave their family member to suffer or risk mistreatment from strangers; they also cannot, materially, financially, emotionally and mentally, sustain the level of output to family caregiving without suffering (their own health, the quality of ...
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24 Hours - 2024 01 08

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  I am working to develop a scenario that will allow my family and my household to survive Mom's family caregiving mission. We know that I cannot face another year of 500+ hours a month caregiving and if I cannot do this, Mom is going to have to go into institutional care and if Mom has to go into institutional care, she is not going to survive for very long, compared to the happy days she is spending at home with various of her children and grandchildren looking after her. Mom is at the highest level of care needs. She is an extremely frail elder who would not be able to push the call button for help if she was alone. During her waking hours she has someone attending to her needs every half hour or so to make sure she has everything she needs. Mom has 6 children, 5 of them live locally, one at a distance. I am her second daughter, I am her primary caregiver. When Mom needed to move out of her mental health group home, I led the effort to bring her home to our two bedroom suite on ...
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Family Caregiving is a Team Sport - 2024 04 10

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