CarePLaCe: Empowering Care Partners to be Safe, Healthy and Well

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Only available as part of a package

O1: Deep Dive: CarePLaCe: Empowering Care Partners to be Safe, Healthy and Well

Informal, unpaid care partners are engaged in the difficult work of caring for older adults with chronic health conditions. These hidden healthcare workers can benefit from education, skills training, safer homes, community resources and empowerment to care well and stay well too. CarePLaCe is a program that evaluates the unique caregiving situation, providing an individualized careplan to serve the caregiving dyad with training, resources, home safety modifications, and support along the way. CarePLaCe was developed based on evidence and showed efficacy in a pilot study. Now CarePLaCe is being provided, and studied, in collaboration with a large US municipality in local senior centers.

At the end of this session, participants will be able to:

Evaluate the needs of caregiving dyads (care partner & care recipient) living with chronic health conditions
Recognize the CarePLaCe program components that support care partners to improve their knowledge, skills, environmental safety, use of community resources and self-care activities.
Analyze the contributions of CarePLaCe to the health and wellbeing of care partners and care recipients to assess the need for CarePLaCe in your community.

Kathleen Cameron (Moderator)

Senior Director, Center for Healthy Aging

National Council on Aging

Kathleen Cameron, BSPharm, MPH, has more than 25 years of experience in the health care field as a pharmacist, researcher, and program director focusing on falls prevention, geriatric pharmacotherapy, mental health, long-term services and supports, and caregiving. Cameron is Senior Director of the NCOA Center for Healthy Aging, where she provides subject matter expertise on health care programmatic and policy related issues and oversees the Modernizing Senior Center Resource Center.

Brandi L Buchanan MA, OTD, OTR/L

Director- CarePLaCe Clinics, Associate Professor, Senior Clinician

AT Still University

Using her expertise as an occupational therapist, Dr. Brandi L. Buchanan has collaborated with colleagues to develop the CarePLaCe program, serving care partners who are doing the hard work of caring for an older adult with chronic illness. Dr. Buchanan has extensive experience working with older adults--as a Master Trainer in the Matter of Balance falls prevention program, an educator and facilitator for Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) and Individual CST (I-CST)—an enrichment program for individuals with mild to moderate dementia—and as a facilitator for the Car-Fit program, which promotes the fit and safety of older adults in their own vehicle. Dr. Buchanan is committed to empowering older adults to stay healthy and well, even as they engage in caring for others. She believes that life can be full and fulfilling all the way through!