COLORADO: Caregivers Need Some TLC, Too

Expense, long hours apt to stress kin who assist their elders

By Lisa Marshall, Boulder Daily Camera
March 19, 2004

BOULDER - It was just over 12 years ago that Anne Hasse's life took a radical turn.

Her mother, Anne Miller, who was 81 at the time, arrived from Illinois for her Christmas visit. Within moments, Miller
cracked her head on the hard concrete at the airport, suffering a concussion and inner ear damage.

After that came a series of health problems: two fractured pelvises, two cataract surgeries, treatment for colon cancer
and a stroke that left her left side paralyzed.

Since then, Hasse, a widow and only child who lives in Jamestown, has cared for her mother. She quit three part-time
jobs she loved, neglected many of her hobbies and spent nearly every penny her late husband had left her.

"Basically, we are living below the poverty level," says Hasse, now 64.

She's not alone.

According to the National Family Caregivers Association, 414,417 "family caregivers" across Colorado spend 444 million
hours each year providing a service that would be worth more than $3.9 billion annually if they were paid.

That's the problem, says association co-founder Suzanne Mintz.

Mintz recently joined a bipartisan group of senators and representatives on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., to draw
attention to a work force they say is largely ignored and seldom compensated.

"Caregiving is the issue of our age," Mintz says. "Sooner or later, it will affect virtually every family in America,
and we are not prepared as individuals, or as a nation, to deal with it."

Family caregivers - those who care for a family member unable to care for themselves - account for an estimated $257
billion annually in services, more than twice what is spent each year on nursing homes and paid home care combined.
That's according to a state-by-state survey conducted by the association and Peter Arno of the department of
epidemiology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.

More than one-fourth of the adult population has provided care for a chronically ill, disabled or senior family member
or friend during the past year.

Yet, Arno says, "Caregiving is generally not acknowledged to be of economic value." At a recent Congressional Town Hall
Meeting on the subject, members of Congress and caregiver advocates called for tax relief for caregivers, Medicaid
reform to ease their burden and an enhancement of the Family and Medical Leave Act to allow more of them to leave work
to care for their loved ones.

Boulder County is fairly progressive in caregiver services. It provides adult day-care programs, a Care Connections
newsletter offering advice and sharing stories, and an Elder Care Network of people to talk to about resources and
funds available.

The Volunteer Respite Program sends volunteers into homes once a week to help take care of the elderly and give
caregivers a break.

"When she walks in the door, I mow her down on the way out and take my two-hour hike," Hasse says of her respite
volunteer.

Spouses caring for ill spouses or children caring for ill parents often tend to neglect their own mental and physical
health and suffer depression, says Cooper, who has cut her own work hours in half to care for an ailing mother-in-law
with Parkinson's disease.

"It is probably one of the most rewarding jobs you can ever do in life, but it is also one of the most difficult and
stressful," she says.

For Hasse, the economic toll also has been devastating.

To put her mother in a nursing home, the average cost is $51,279 -annually in Colorado. Hasse would have to sell her
mother's house and spend her into poverty before qualifying for Medicaid.

"I have expended all my funds to care for her for 12 years, and if they took everything she had, I don't know if I
could keep my home on what I have after she is gone," Hasse says.

Plus, she adds, she's gotten used to regular games of Scrabble and visits to the symphony with her "spitfire" mom.

"We are buddies. I don't want to have to go visit her in a nursing home with a vacant stare." Hasse believes the
federal government should do much more to support people like her.

"They are willing to put out $4,000-plus a month to put her in a nursing home, but they won't give me a dime to keep
her at home," she says. Soon, say caregiver advocates, the government may be forced to -increase its support for people
like Hasse.

As baby boomers' parents age, they will become caregivers themselves. And when their children have to care for them,
the pool of -caregivers will dwindle.

According to a study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, there were 11 potential caregivers for each person needing
care in 1990. By 2050, that ratio will be 4-to-1.

As Cooper puts it: "They say it takes a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to care for an elder.
It's a privilege we should all be participating in."

SOURCE: Rocky Mountain News, CO
http://tinyurl.com/2phw2

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