What do comfort seats, caregiving workbooks, caregiver friendly assist jackets, loving conversations, and medication tracking systems all have in common?  These are descriptions of some of our Caregiver Friendly award winners from past years.  They also represent thousands of hours of loving labor by their producers and manufactures, all working with one thought in common, “What can I do to help the life of the family caregiver become easier?” Every year, we are truly impressed by the quality of the entries into the award program, but what I am most excited about is the wide variety of industries that are now sending in entries and the incredible work they are producing with family caregivers in mind.  We have been asked to extend the deadline this year to accommodate some of these organizations and are happy to comply.  Therefore, the new deadline for entries into the Caregiver Friendly Awards has been extended to Tuesday, March 14, 2006.

We at Today’s Caregiver magazine and caregiver.com, launched the Caregiver Friendly Awards in 2002 to celebrate products, services, programs, books and media designed with the needs of caregivers in mind. Entries for products include wheelchairs, consumer medical devices, disposable products and accessible devices. Among the entries for services and programs are insurance, medical and EAP programs, care and case management organizations, Long Term Care facilities, homecare and transportation organizations, as well as non-profit agencies. The entries for books concentrate on caregiver friendly books (informative, educational, inspirational, and insightful). Areas encompassed by the media entries are audio, video and website producers.

Award winners will be recognized at Today’s Caregiver Magazine’s Annual Fort Lauderdale Fearless Caregiver Conference. Winners will also be profiled in caregiver.com where the 2005 winners can presently be found and in the May/June issue of the magazine.

Please share your labors of love with family caregivers and let them know that someone out there is thinking of them.  Award entry applications can be found online at www.caregiver.com or by calling 800-829-2734.

 

Gary Barg
Editor-in-Chief
gary@caregiver.com