Why Families Should Work Together
to Support the Main FamilyCaregiver

Since the pandemic, many employers and companies have complained that it is getting harder and harder to find individuals who want to work. For this reason, families that need additional caregivers when a loved one needs total care may have a challenge in finding suitable and reliable individuals who are willing or available to work, even on employment websites. This situation can force families in different households to come together and put aside any differences they may have to come up with a plan of action or alternative solutions. It is important to recognize that this crisis involves every member of the family directly or indirectly.

For this reason, a Structured Holistic Service has been designed to give families tools and skills to help them generate schedules and tasks for members living in different households, enabling them to pull together during their family crises. As a result, the burden of responsibility will not fall solely on one individual. If this does happen, it can cause these families to have not one but possibly two members with health crises: the person needing care and the person providing it.

You may be a family who, unfortunately, is dealing with one or more individuals requiring total care, whether due to terminal illness or permanent disability. The first point that every member needs to consider is who the individuals involved in the crisis are.

• The first individual is the person or persons needing care.

• The second person involved in this crisis is the main family caregiver who is most likely working 24/7 with minimum relief. They are forced to learn all the new medical procedures and information while trying to provide quality care for your sick loved one.

This is why initially, every sibling or family member who can possibly assist needs to know what is going on with both individuals in order to have structure and a degree of normality in this difficult situation. As a result, your family can have quality time and cherished memories not just with your sick loved one but with one another, rather than time that is clouded by ill feelings, chaos, and overwhelming grief.

For this reason, the goal of the SHS&S team is to focus on providing the main family caregiver with tools, skills, resources, and additional caregivers necessary to have free time, physical strength, and mental clarity to be the best caregiver possible for your sick loved one. To accomplish this task, we need your help and support.

In order to structure a successful SHS&S plan of action, there will be a variety of tasks that can be divided among various family members, as we will need as much help as possible. Three of the main tasks will be as follows:

1. Creating a medical profile for the individual needing care, including information pertaining to their needs, physicians, and others involved with their care. This information will be compiled in a binder, which will serve as the main tool used by all caregivers involved with their care.

2. Generating additional caregivers from friends, family members, or employment websites, who can be trained by the SHS&S team to provide quality caregiving.

3. Providing training services is the next important step. Our training is divided into three parts: Part-1 focuses on training the main family caregiver, Part-2 helps them create a medical profile for the individual(s) needing care, and Part-3 provides training for additional caregivers.

To structure a successful SHS&S plan of action, there are several tasks that need to be divided among various family members. Since we require as much help as possible, three of the primary tasks are as follows:

1. Creating a medical profile of the individual requiring care with all information related to the patient’s needs, physicians, and other caregivers. This information will be compiled in a binder, which will be the primary tool used by all caregivers involved in the patient’s care.

2. Generating additional caregivers from friends, family members, or employment websites, who can be trained by the SHS&S team to provide quality caregiving.

3. Providing training services to the caregivers, which are divided into three parts: Part-1: The Main Family Caregiver, who is the main focus, Part-2: Helping them create a Medical Profile of the individual(s) requiring care, and Part-3: Training additional caregivers.

How can family members living outside the home still help, and why is this so vital?

It is essential for family members living outside the home to take on some of these responsibilities to ease the Main Family Caregiver’s burden. This is vital because their 24/7 caregiving job is taking a physical and emotional toll on their health, which can cause two sick individuals needing total care. By getting involved now, the risk of total responsibility being on another family member if the Main Family Caregiver’s health gives out is eliminated. One of the outside family members can start by acting as the Coordinators of Affairs if the MFC needs and accepts this support. If so, this outside family member can help coordinate some of the following projects:

1. The Main Family Caregiver may not have time to go through most of the training because of unending caregiving. Therefore, one of the greatest forms of support a sibling outside the home can offer is to go through most of the training (online) for them and help them create the Binder. The binder will include the medical profile that all caregivers will need to use each day.

2. The sibling can now create two identical binders and keep one and mail the other to the MFC. As a result, they both will have identical information, and communication will flow back and forth. The sooner information in the Binder is filled out, the sooner the MFC will have this valuable tool readily available.

3. The next important task is to help generate additional caregivers for this MFC from additional family, friends, or employment websites like Indeed and interview these by Zoom if necessary.

4. Help create schedules and task sheets caregivers will need as they care for the individual.

5. Help care for all legal aspects of the loved one’s care if the MFC needs this help.

6. Consult or be familiar with all physicians and individuals involved with their care if the MFC needs this help.

7. Look up resources and information about the loved one’s disease, and send this to the MFC to put in the Binder.

8. Help keep up with Doctor’s appointments and what’s going on with the individual’s care.

9. Be a listening ear to the Main Family Caregiver.

10. Do not enable the person needing care but encourage them to be respectful, cooperative, and appreciative of what the MFC and their immediate family is doing for them. (This can especially be a problem if the person needing care has dementia that is affecting the brain and they have a variety of behaviors. These issues and behaviors can contribute to serious marital and family problems for the MFC’s personal family who is already tasked and overworked.)

11. Help pay the weekly salary of additional caregivers in Team B and send money for extra supplies.

12. Divide any financial needs among various family members outside of the immediate family to reduce the financial burden on a single family.

At the end of four weeks, the MFC should have a binder filled with their structured, unique profile and information, along with trained, reliable caregivers in place and valuable resources. This program is designed holistically to help make life easier for the whole family, especially the Main Family Caregiver, as they face the daily challenges of never-ending caregiving. We focus on the Main Family Caregiver because helping them enables them to help themselves. As a result of gaining physical strength, mental clarity, and free time for themselves, they can now be the best caregivers to the person who needs their help the most.