Family Caregiving in the New Normal

Family Caregiving in the New Normal discusses how the drastic economic changes that have occurred over the past few years have precipitated a new conversation on how family care for older adults will evolve in the future. This text summarizes the challenges and potential solutions scientists, policy makers, and clinical providers must address as they grapple with these changes, with a primary focus given to the elements that may impact how family caregiving is organized and addressed in subsequent decades, including sociodemographic trends like divorce, increased participation of women in the workforce, geographic mobility, fewer children in post-baby boom families, chronic illness trends, economic stressors, and the current policy environment. A section on the support of caregivers includes technology-based solutions that examine existing models, personal health records, and mobile applications, big data issues, decision-making support, person-centered approaches, crowd-sourced caregiving such as blogs and personal websites that have galvanized caregivers, and new methods to combine paid and unpaid forms of care. Provides a concise roadmap of the demographic, economic, health trends, and policy challenges facing family caregiversPresents potential solutions to caregiving so that scientists, policymakers, and clinical providers can best meet the needs of families and communities in the upcoming decadesIncludes in-depth, diverse stories of caregivers of persons with different diseases who share perspectives Covers person-centered care approaches to family caregiving that summarize effective community-based services of psychosocial intervention models Examines how existing efficacious models can more effectively reach and serve individual families