Caring Community - Talking Things Over

A Caregiver's Challenge

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 15:06:04 -0700

Maryann Schacht, MSW, BCD, is an author, speaker, and workshop leader with more than 30 years experience working with families in crisis. Her book titled A Caregiver’s Challenge: Living, Loving, Letting Go offers a road map and survival guide to everyone who is suddenly thrust into a caregiver role. She combines her personal experience caring for her terminally ill husband with her professional expertise in this invaluable resource. A Caregiver’s Challenge offers support, resources, and useful exercises for caregivers and their patients.

Maryann is frequently interviewed on national radio about caregivers and comfort care issues.

A Framework For Thinking Ethically

Thu, 3 Nov 2005 09:26:07 -0800

A Framework For Thinking Ethically
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University
This document is designed as an introduction to thinking ethically. We all have an image of our “better selves” - or of how we are when we act ethically or are “at our best.” We probably also have an image of what an ethical community, an ethical business, or an ethical government is - and maybe even an ethical society as a whole. Ethics really has to do with all three levels - acting ethically as individuals, creating ethical organizations and governments, and making our society as a whole ethical in the way it treats all.

Caring Connections - It's About How You LIVE

Sun, 8 Jul 2007 16:19:27 -0700

Caring Connections, a program of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), is a national consumer engagement initiative to improve care at the end of life, supported by a grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Caring Connections
-Provides free resources, information and motivation for actively learning about end-of-life resources.
-Promotes awareness of and engagement in efforts to increase access to quality end-of-life care.
-Helps people connect with the resources they need, when they need them.
-Brings together community, state and national partners working to improve end-of-life care.

Caring Conversations

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 09:56:13 -0800

*Caring Conversations* was developed by the Center for Practical Bioethics as a consumer education initiative to help individuals and their families share meaningful conversation while making practical preparations for end-of-life decisions.

Caring Conversations is endorsed by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Association and is a recommended resource by AARP and Bill Moyers' outreach materials for his PBS series, On Our Own Terms.

The goals of Caring Conversations:
·To shift the focus of advance care planning to include conversations with family and friends
·To provide community education

Center for Practical Bioethics-Case Studies at the Crossroads of decision

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 08:11:24 -0800

Case studies provide a way for us to analyze and think-through difficult medical and moral situations. This Center for Practical Bioethics webpage links you to stories that will challenge you to think clearly as you consider options at the crossroads of decision.

Circus of Cancer – Breast Cancer Support

Thu, 3 Nov 2005 15:31:38 -0800

Circus of Cancer-Breast Cancer Support
A how-to site to help you step right up when a friend has breast cancer. From the heart info includes: Upon first hearing the news; boosting her spirits, helping her family, supporting chemo treatments, talking to your friend, for her husband or other partner, great sites for small gifts, pink ribbons. Kelly Corrigan, initiator Circus of Cancer, first diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in August 2004, and Nan Davenport, designer who together with Kelly has made educational software for kids and teachers since 1999.

Consumer Help Site - National Association of Social Workers

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:55:39 -0800

In thousands of ways, social workers help people help themselves. People of every age. From every background. In every corner of the country - wherever we’re needed - starting here and now. Welcome to your source for professional advice, inspiring stories - even a social worker directory. Social workers. Help starts here. This website is provided by the National Association of Social Workers and includes sections on Seniors and Aging, Issues and Answers, Mind and Spirit. The Senior section includes in-depth look issues of import, real life stories shared, resources of value, current trends, helpful tip, options and other information helpful for finding one’s way through the senior years. The Health and Well Being section includes information related to death and dying, living with illness, pain management, etc. The Mind and Spirit section includes orientation to various mental illnesses, grief & loss and other helpful information.

Conversations

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 17:02:59 -0800

Conversations is a program Community Network volunteers have envisioned to inspire, collect and share the conversations that make creative expression a dynamic component of a stable, nurturing community. The program has targeted teens in the South and West Santa Rosa community to learn film techniques and the elements of drama and story telling through the process of analyzing selected films then filming and creating their own play.

Further development of the program includes working with teens in interviewing family members about their history and lives, exploring ethnic arts and music and incorporating their own art, music and interviews into a documentary. This would provide teens with the means to become aware that their lives have value, that they possess talents and stories to tell about themselves and their community, and that they can develop important life skills as well as professional, marketable skills.

Critical Conditions

Wed, 20 Oct 2004 16:25:06 -0700

CRITICAL Conditions (SM) is a program that can help you and your loved ones talk about your final health care decisions.

Final Choices Conversation Guide

Sun, 24 Oct 2004 19:04:19 -0700

Talking now with a parent, and planning for his or her future medical needs, is the best way to make sure that his or her wishes will be respected.

This Conversation Guide (a downloadable pdf document) provides:

Suggestions on how to raise the issue
Responses to concerns he or she might express
Questions you might want to ask

Final Crossing: Learning to Die in Order to Live

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:21:05 -0700

The Final Crossing: Learning to Die in Order to Live is a new book by Dr. Scott Eberle, Medical Director, Hospice of Petaluma. “This book is itself a rite of passage. Extraordinary insights shared by two remarkable people, one dying, the other the inner life and decisions of the physician and friend attending this fine fellow preparing to head into death. This is the best work of its sort I have come across. There are so many levels, so many books in this book that it might well become a teaching text in many classrooms.” Stephen Levine, author of Who Dies?, Healing into Life and Death, and A Year to Live

Hold Your Breath - A Journey into Cross-Cultural Medicine

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:31:56 -0700

Hold Your Breath - A Journey into Cross-Cultural Medicine
Film Directed by Maren Grainger-Monsen, MD Check PBS for local broadcasting times in your region. Northern CA KQED and KRCB broadcasting in April, 2007. A lovely and moving meditation on the clash between religion, culture and modern medicine. Produced by Stanford Center for BioMedical Ethics, Program in Bioethics and Film

Dr. Monsen is the film maker who also produced: Vanishing Line about her journey with a hospice chaplain caring for the dying; and Grave Words a entertaining film about use of resusciation for training medical students and others.

Hospice of Petaluma

Fri, 11 May 2007 15:35:02 -0700

Rooted in community, Hospice of Petaluma has been providing quality, compassionate hospice care and grief services to individuals and families facing life-threatening illness or the death of a loved one since 1977. Hospice of Petaluma and our sister program, Memorial Hospice, are a service of the St. Joseph Health System, a Ministry of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange. Patients and families receive interdisciplinary patient care with individualized attention to nursing, psychosocial, spiritual and practical needs that may arise at the end of life. Hospice services are provided by professional staff and specially trained caregiver and grief support volunteers. Volunteer trainings are held in the spring and fall with both daytime and evening classes.

Kaiser Santa Rosa Senior Resources

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 07:39:23 -0800

Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center provides this site to inform seniors and their caregivers about classes and resources of value. Programs are generally open to the community-at-large and include support groups for diabetes and classes concerning mental health, advance care planning, wellness through life’s end, managing ongoing conditions and many others. A link to the Kaiser Santa Rosa education catalogue is also provided along with links to area hospices and senior resources.

Link2Care - Information on every facet of caregiving for dementia

Sun, 20 Nov 2005 18:28:08 -0800

Free, convenient advice and support via your computer. Link2Care if for caregivers caring for people with dementia and covers every facet of caregiving for this population. You'll find help with care planning and decision making, timely articles, and a community of caring friends. You can consult an expert, one-on-one, for medical, legal and caregiving advice-it's all free, all available at your convenience. And the site is a secure, password protected site, for your privacy and confidentiality. Provided courtesy of Redwood Caregiver Resource Center, Santa Rosa, CA 707-542-0282 or 800-834-1636