Caregivers

Monday evening (October 17), in the living room of Slonim House--the old tutor house that is home to graduate studies at Sarah Lawrence College and to the Health Advocacy Program--we gathered to listen, to share and to explore the experience of caregiving. The focus of this first seminar was on caregiving for a person of another generation--a parent or a child.

There is a lot more I want to say about that evening and about the caregiving project that is a collaboration of ethics (Alice Herb is our lawyer/ethicist) and theatre (Shirley Kaplan is our dramatist), but for how, let me just introduce the seminar's participants.

Margot Benton is a student in the Center for Continuing Education at Sarah Lawrence College and is a caregiver for her now adult daughter who has special health care needs.

Abbey Berg is an audiologist who teaches in the Department of Communications Studies at Pace University and directs the newborn hearing screening program at New York Presbyterian Hospital—Columbia Campus. She is caregiver for her great aunt Lillian.

Margery Franklin is the director of the Sarah Lawrence Child Development Institute and was caregiver for her mother.

Mary Ellen Geist left her job as anchor for WCBS radio to help take care of her father who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She chronicles her role as caregiver on her web site, “Living, Loving & Letting Go: A Daughter’s Journey."

Gladys González-Ramos is an Associate Professor of Social Work at New York University School of Social Work. She has published a chapter, “The Courage of Caring,” about her experience as caregiver for her parents in Levine’s book.

Jane Gross is a reporter for the New York Times and author of many articles about older people, including a recent article about being “Alone in Illness,” and earlier articles about her mother’s experience with illness and death. Jane read from one of those articles, “The Quest for a Peaceful Death,” (August 6, 2003) about her mother’s effort to be allowed to die in a nursing home.

Maggie Hoffman is co-founder of Project DOCC (Delivery of Chronic Care), which works to improve the quality of care for severely chronically ill children by educating pediatricians-in-training about their special needs from a parent's perspective.

Carol Levine directs directs the Families and Health Care Project at the United Hospital Fund and is recognized as one of the nation’s experts on caregiving She is author of two books on caregiving, Always on Call and The Cultures of Caregiving, and is caregiver for her husband, who was severely disabled in an automobile accident. Carol was one of the planners of the seminar and helped lead the discussion.

Maggie Ornstein is a young adult caregiver for her mother, a role she took on before finishing high school.

Mary Tierney is a graduate of the Health Advocacy Program and an independent geriatric care manager. Mary was caregiver for her father who had Alzheimers.

Connie Zuckerman is an attorney and bioethicist, who teaches and consults in bioethics and particularly end-of-life issues. As a young adult, she was a caregiver for her grandparents. Connie is a contributing author in Levine’s book, Always on Call: When Illness Turns Families into Caregivers.

The evening’s discussion was filmed with plans to craft versions of this and subsequent seminars that can be used for education and outreach to support caregivers.