Gary Barg, Editor-in-Chief
22 years ago, this coming Saturday, we conducted an experiment. We wanted to find out what would we get when bringing together 400 family caregivers, service providers, leading caregiving experts and one certified star of stage and screen for the day. The answer we discovered was that - you get magic!
The Fearless Caregiver Conference series began on April 25, 1998 at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We were joined by action star Robert Urich, as the keynote speaker for that first event, having recently shared his cancer diagnosis and remission on national television. Two things were evident throughout the day. The first was that caregivers loved to share with one another and the advice they had was as effective and appropriate as any offered by any degreed professional. And many times, much more so. The reason for this is simple. The family caregiver is the person caring for their loved one around the clock and necessarily creates solutions for the challenges that they face on a daily basis.
The other thing that was evident was that caregivers for loved ones with differing diagnoses and caregiving situations could learn from one another’s experiences. As illustration, I recall an interaction among four caregivers sitting around a luncheon table during that first conference. Their main care concerns were (respectively) AIDS, Parkinson’s, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. As I listened in on them, they were reveling in the fact that each of them brought different but powerful experiences to the table. The caregiver whose primary care concern was AIDS talked about managing her loved ones medication regime, the Alzheimer’s caregiver was sharing her challenges with the long-term care facility in which she had just placed her loved one and the Parkinson’s caregiver was talking of solutions he had come up with regarding his loved ones increasingly limited mobility. The areas of interest and the skill sets these caregivers brought to that table were both unique and of specific value to their fellow luncheon companions.
There are many things we have learned since that day. No longer do we hold sessions until 5:30 pm like so many events. Now we call our schedule a “full caregiver’s day,” generally starting at 9:30 am and ending at 2:30 pm. This schedule allows for the caregivers to be able to drop their kids at school and their parents at adult day care and still have time to pick them all up at the end of the day without missing any of the conference.
The other major change we made with regards to the day’s schedule was to hold an open question and answer panel for all attendees in the morning session. The purpose is to have any questions posed by a caregiver in attendance answered by our panel of local and national experts. The panels have consisted of doctors, social workers, Area Agency on Aging caregiver support professionals and even financial experts.
We know that the Coronavirus makes live events impossible at the moment, so we have taken much of our education and support online. Stay tuned for some exciting news about this in the coming days.
The thing to remember as we are sheltering in place is that as long as we are all in this together, you are not alone.
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