Grants can pay for Alzheimer’s respite care
Grants can pay for Alzheimer’s respite care
NC agency finds funding; you can too
Private duty agencies may find that they can provide a valuable service to the community and boost their own client base by developing a respite care program for Alzheimer’s patients and their families.
A small North Carolina hospital-based agency has begun to develop such a program, which includes giving certified nursing assistants (CNAs) some extra training and inservices about how to deal with Alzheimer’s patients.
"We’ll have a CNA stay with an Alzheimer’s patient for up to six hours a week in two-hour increments, while the family takes a break from taking care of the patient," says Ethel L. Leamon, RN, manager of Home Care Services of Anson County Hospital in Wadesboro.
The program is funded by a $25,000 grant from the North Carolina Division of Aging in Raleigh. The money will pay for six hours of respite care each week for up to eight families who cannot afford to pay for the care.
"We didn’t have any services for Alzheimer’s patients here other than putting their loved ones in a nursing home," says Fannie Ratliff, MEd, MAED, program director of Anson Regional Medical Services, also in Wadesboro.
Ratliff applied for the grant after working on the application for several months. The agency received the grant in September and has recently begun the respite care program through a contract with Anson County Hospital.
Anson Regional Medical Services is a federally-funded, rural health center that provides outpatient care in Anson County, which is about 60 miles south of Charlotte.
Ratliff says that anyone, including a private duty home care agency, can apply for a similar grant by following these suggestions:
1. Research what grant money is available in your state.
Ratliff had already obtained two $1,000 grants for Alzheimer’s disease education from the North Carolina Division of Aging, so she knew that agency was interested in funding programs on the disease.
Contact appropriate agency
Most states have an agency that is devoted to causes concerning the elderly, so she recommends administrators start by calling these organizations and asking for a grant application package.
Private duty administrators also could call their local Alzheimer’s disease associations to see if the chapter distributes contracts for respite care. Many of these chapters pay for respite care for Alzheimer’s families, says Kara Kennedy, MSW, director of patient and family services for the Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association Inc. in Chicago.
"If local Alzheimer’s chapters don’t directly offer subsidies, they will know who does in their communities," Kennedy says.
Also, there are some national foundations that provide grants for these types of programs. One such group is The Brookdale Foundation Group, a philanthropic organization that specializes in grants for services for the elderly.
Nora O’Brien, MA, assistant vice president of The Brookdale Foundation Group, says the organization awards $10,500 in seed money for a two-year program. Each year the organization chooses about 15 states in which to award grants. The foundation requests proposals in March.
Grant recipients receive ongoing technical assistance, bulletins, and training at an annual conference, O’Brien says.
The best way to obtain more information about the Brookdale grant is to fax a request for information, which includes a name, address, and telephone number, to the foundation, O’Brien says. (For contact information, see source box, above.)
"Then we’ll put them on a mailing list to receive our newsletter, which will announce the states we will work with," she adds.
2. Hold a focus group to demonstrate need for respite care.
"What we had to do was first show there was a need in the county," Ratliff says.
So Ratliff spent a day at the local Wal-Mart store, handing out Alzheimer’s disease information and asking citizens if they would participate in a focus group.
Everyone in Wadesboro goes to the local Wal-Mart, Ratliff says, and she figured this would be the best way to find a representative sampling of county residents. She enlisted help from 10 people, including some health care professionals, whom she met with in the store’s parking lot. Then she asked several more health care providers to attend the focus group.
She held two sessions, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. The participants chose times that were convenient to them.
The purpose of the group was to find out what the residents thought about Alzheimer’s disease and services available for these patients and their families.
"We asked them what it meant to them when they heard the word Alzheimer’s," Ratliff says.
Other questions were:
• What can be done about caregiver burnout?
• How can we better serve people in Anson County?
• How would the community benefit from services provided to patients with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease?
The focus groups’ comments were recorded and transcribed so they could be included in the grant application.
Respite care, education needed most
And although focus group members didn’t use the term "respite care," they did say they felt caretakers of Alzheimer’s disease patients needed someone to come into their homes and give them a break from the disease.
"We also found out from the focus group that more education was definitely needed," Ratliff adds.
3. Ask other groups for letters of support.
Agencies that provide grants want to know that many agree that the service is needed. So Ratliff obtained letters of support from several local agencies and met with other professionals who provide services to Alzheimer’s patients. Also, she obtained statistics about Alzheimer’s disease in Anson County from the local chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.
The association provided evidence that the county had been without an Alzheimer’s disease support group for several years, although there were more than 550 cases of the disease or some form of dementia. "We found out that in remote areas of the county where transportation is a barrier, caregivers need respite care more than others," Ratliff says.
All of these facts and comments helped support the section of the grant application in which Ratliff had to write why there was a need for a respite program in her county.
The grant package included about 20 pages of the actual application, letters of support, and other material.
Ratliff said the agency could apply to renew the grant each year.
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