By Liza Berger, Staff Writer
Where
to Turn for Help
Caregiving in rural America carries a unique set of challenges.
Medical care and other health and social services are few and
far between, and transportation is scarce. Meanwhile,
poverty and a lack of younger family members in these areas
present still more impediments to securing necessary care for
loved ones.
Despite these hardships, there are places that caregivers can
turn to for help. The Rural Assistance Center
(http://www.raconline.org), a product of the Department of
Health and Human Services’ Rural Task Force, serves as a
one-stop online site for information on rural issues. Programs
such as The Eldercare Locator and The National Adult Day Care
Services Association offer ways for caregivers to seek the help
for their loved ones that the need.
Also, in recent years, a few unique programs have cropped up
in rural areas to help the elderly. These include PACE (Programs
of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) which is now serving 14
rural communities around the country as part of a demonstration
project. (For more on PACE, go to
http://www.cms.hhs.gov/PACE/. Other resources and Web sites for
caregivers are listed below.)
Resource Shortage
Living in a rural area makes the already difficult task of
caregiving even more of a struggle. One of the biggest problems
facing caregivers in rural areas is a lack of medical and health
services. There are fewer adult day care centers and in-home
health services, such as respite care or meals on wheels, than
in urban and suburban areas.
Some statistics: Twenty-two percent of rural caregivers
report using an aide or nurse through an agency or service. That
compares with 25 percent of urban and 24 percent of suburban
caregivers. Also, only four percent of rural caregivers make use
of respite services compared with five percent of their urban
and suburban counterparts. And only three percent of rural
caregivers make use of adult day centers, while eight percent of
urban caregivers and six percent of suburban caregivers do.
These numbers come from the 2006 report “Caregiving in Rural
America,” from Easter Seals and the National Alliance for
Caregiving.
Why the lack of services? Not only do rural areas struggle to
attract and retain qualified professional medical and social
service professionals, but also the government increasingly has
been failing to provide adequate funding. Compounding the
problem of accessing needed health and social services is
distance: “They are harder to utilize because they are just so
geographically dispersed,” noted Shawn Bloom, CEO of PACE.
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