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A woman cares for her grandmother as her primary caregiver. – AI generated image/The Dallas Examiner

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(The Dallas Examiner) – Preserving the family, especially as loved ones age and need assistance daily may be exhaustive and time consuming.

Many families often need extra help and resources to help their parents or other loved ones who need extra help, according to Doni Green, director of the North Central Texas Area Agency on Aging.

“If you look at people who are living with dementia, people usually think family members don’t have to worry, but the reality is, 70% of people living with dementia are living in the community and oftentimes the only support they get is from family members,” said Green, as he hosted a webinar to help families find resources that could assist them.

Programs that Can Consider Family Members as Paid Caregivers, presented by NCTAAA, was a seminar focused on navigating public benefits such as Medicare and Medicaid for those eligible.

“The broader initiative of the webinar was to provide resources and information to care for family members with dementia,” Green said. “It is probably one of the most common reasons that family members call us, and it is not specifically about dementia, but it seems to be more important in dementia care situations because the family members are often weary of strangers and in many cases family members have had to reduce work or quit work, or reduce work hours in order to care for their family members and oftentimes that comes with a huge financial sacrifice.”

She emphasized the importance of addressing this issue.

“Family members are really the backbone of our nation’s system of long-term services for support and there are a lot of rewards that come with caregiving. But on the flip side, those that care for family members are making financial sacrifices for family members and often they are neglecting their own care. They are likely dealing with depression and anxiety and one of the things that we have been working on in the last couple of years is to let family members know that there are services that support them in many cases,” Green stated.

For families with limited income and resources, state programs such as Medicaid or Medicare are available for those that qualify.

“Ironically, it’s easier to get paid if somebody is dealing with financial challenges and economic hardships, and the major programs are funded through either Medicaid or the State of Texas,” Green said.

Programs that people can look into include the STAR+PLUS and STAR+PLUS Waiver programs. There are also Texas Health and Human Services commission programs that allow family members to be paid providers. Family members can contact the Texas Health and Human Services Department at 855-937-2372, so they are familiar with the eligibility requirements, according to Green.

“That is a statewide number, and anybody in the state of Texas can dial that number and enter the ZIP code and then the call would be routed to the aging facility resource center for that community,” she said. “We all need to research and find our options before we end up in a crisis situation.

“Generally, we don’t like to think about the facility or what are our parents are going to do if they can’t live on their own. And so we talk to people in any stage of the process, but most of the people we call are really the people we needed to help yesterday and to just guide them to the process,”

Challenges of the program include the 45-day waitlist that it takes for an application to process.

Different programs have different eligibility criteria such as the Medicaid program where the family member that needs care can be any age as long as they receive Medicaid benefits and same thing with the Medicare waivers through the state of Texas, a person has to have low income and limited resources and be over the age of 65, according to Green.

“It does help reduce stress for the family and if the family member is not able to work, and has to reduce work hours, it helps relieve that financial stress and the studies have shown that it really does work well with the family members that need that extra help,” Green said. “Family members are more likely to be satisfied with people that they know.”

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