This month is National Family Caregiver month. We truly honor those who give of themselves, day in and day out, to ensure their elderly Mom and Dad, or family member in need of assistance, receives the care they need. An estimated 44 million people provide full or part-time care for a family member, an often a stressful and unacknowledged job. Yet, caregivers have few tools, few support systems and receive minimal, if any, pay or training for these responsibilities.

Every day families struggle with the issues of caring for elderly parents or loved ones. They worry daily if Mom and Dad (or grandma and grand-pa), are OK. They may be part of a “sandwich generation”, juggling children and aging parental needs and feeling guilt over not being able to dedicate more time to their elderly parents. Most often they are overworked, overstressed and sometimes, live far away. They struggle with many demanding issues and difficult conversations balancing love and respect with concern.

Let’s face it, caregiving is a massive mixed bag of challenges that many believe to be at a crisis level. In fact, TEDMED (www.tedmed.com), a community that comes together both online and in face-to-face four-day sessions, named it their second most important health and medical issue of the year for 2012. The TEDMED conference brings together approximately 1,600 leaders from a wide range of medical and non-medical fields to contribute their knowledge and multi-disciplinary expertise, with a dash of theater and entertainment. Their focus is to dialog on the “Great Challenges of Health and Medicine.” It is no surprise that caregiving, preparing for onslaught of dementia and end of life issues, continue to be topics of concentration, particularly as the graying of America explodes. Six of TEDMED’s caregiving/planning experts weighed-in on the top 10 reasons, from their perspective, as to why caregiving is a critical area of concern (http://ow.ly/fbsI3) The Co-Founder of the National Family Caregivers Association (NFCA), Suzanne Geffen Mintz, shared her responses:

1. Emotional isolation and the lack of support (paid and unpaid) to help a family caregiver balance his/her life

2. Caregivers neglecting their own healthcare

3. Lack of recognition and respect of family caregivers by healthcare providers, institutions, and insurers

4. High rates of caregiver depression

5. The growing cost of healthcare nationally

6. The financial burden to individuals and families because of the costs of care

7. The increase in life expectancy which has come about due to better nutrition and the development of life-saving medications and other medical advances

8. Delayed parenting, creating the sandwich generation of caregivers

9. More women in the workforce

10. Dispersal of families across the country

Organizations such as Meals-on-Wheels Greater San Diego, Inc. can help ease some of the burdens by providing nutritious meals, socialization and well-being checks from a friendly volunteer. Many of their clients have family that live far away, or no family at all. Still, others have families who balance work and children with the care of Mom and Dad and just cannot be there every day or for every meal. Meals-on-Wheels ensures that loved ones are eating right or have not taken ill, easing at least some of the stress associated with this balancing act. Meals-on-Wheels does indeed make sure that… Mom and Dad are OK!

Note: Meals-on-Wheels Greater San Diego’s only requirement for receiving meals is that a senior be 60 years of age or older. There are no income guidelines. In fact, they honor the caregivers’ role so much, they will serve them meals as well, even if they are under 60 years of age, as long as they are actively caring for a senior!