When Children Become Caregivers

Jordan wakes at 6 a.m. She helps her mother, who is recovering from surgery for breast cancer, into the bath. Jordan has it all timed. She gulps down breakfast as her mother bathes, and returns to help her out of the tub. "I'll make sure her bandages are clean and didn't get too wet," Jordan says. "And if they did get too wet, I change them."

Her mother is disabled from painful fibromyalgia, so Jordan takes her to her room, where her mother can dress herself. That gives Jordan a chance to get ready for school and walk the dog before her mother, slowly moving into the car, drives her to school.In the evening, Jordan, who asked to be identified by first name only, tends to the family's animals. She helps her mother into bed and wraps a thermal blanket around her. Finally, she has a chance to eat dinner, do homework and wind down before going to sleep. Bedtime can be past midnight for the Florida ninth-grader. It's a long day for a 14-year-old.
About 1.4 million children between ages 8 and 18 are caregivers nationwide, according to the American Association of Caregiving Youth. Evenly divided between girls and boys, about a third are between 8 and 11, and nearly 40 percent are between 12 and 15. Most often, the family member is a parent or grandparent, with a condition such as Alzheimer's disease or dementia; heart, lung or kidney disease; arthritis or diabetes.

Virginia Families Fear Future Without Institutions for Their Chidlren

Adam Bertman at the Northern
Virginia Training Center in Fairfax.

On his bad days, Adam Bertman would crush light bulbs with his bare hands. He once launched the heavy lid of a toilet tank down the stairs, striking a caregiver.One of his worst days came in fall 1998, when Bertman, who has autism and brain disease, became upset while out for a supervised walk. He started throwing rocks at cars and was so out of control by the time police officers arrived that they pulled their guns.
That was Bertman’s life before he entered the Northern Virginia Training Center in Fairfax, one of the commonwealth’s five state-run institutions for the developmentally disabled. It was before he developed relationships with the center’s staff members, who have learned to read his body language for signs that he is becoming agitated.

But now, as the state prepares to close four of the five centers and move their residents to community-based group homes, his mother, Judith Korf, worries that Bertman, 41, will end up in the same situation again.

Genius Grant Winner Brings Creativity to Caregiving

Most creative people would use a $500,000, no-strings attached grant to do something practical for themselves: maybe pay off a mortgage, or fund a research trip, or otherwise enable their next piece of work. But when the poet Heather McHugh won a MacArthur genius grant in 2009, she used that largess to start an organization called Caregifted, which provides free vacations to caregivers of the severely disabled.

Study: Families Providing More Caregiving

More than 40 million Americans care for adults with disabilities and aging individuals, according to a new study that values the volunteer services these family members provide at a whopping $450 billion annually.
The report released this week from AARP finds that the number of family caregivers is on the rise and more is being demanded of them.