by Gillian Rittmaster, LCSW, Assistant Executive Director of Jewish Programs and Health & Healing Support Services
- Create a network of support for you and your loved one, including medical professionals, family, friends, neighbors, and mental health and recreational services.
- Put your oxygen mask on first! If you aren’t caring for yourself you cannot care for a loved one.
- Exercise, eat right, see friends and family, ask yourself what brings you peace and comfort.
- Caregiving is a balance of attending to your loved one and finding activity and joy outside of the caregiving.
- Get respite from the caregiving when you can even if it is mini breaks.
- Acknowledge the losses you may feel and allow yourself time for your feelings. Find validation among your support system.
- Connect with your loved one you are caring for in new ways. What can you do together? What joys do you share?
- Don’t forget that intimacy as small as a comforting touch can be a powerful connection.
- Join a support group of your peer caregivers.
Caring for a loved one can be a stressful and lonely responsibility. Since 1982, WJCS has provided in-home respite services to Westchester families caring for either a dependent older person or a child with an intellectual or developmental disability through our various programs.
The Family Caregiver Network (FCN) combines provides an array of comprehensive and integrated services to caregivers of older adults. Project Time-Out offers respite services to allow caregivers the opportunity to attend to medical, social, recreational, or business matters while providing stimulating companionship, supervision and socialization to the client. Pathways to Care provides compassionate individual and family counseling and supportive connections when people and their loved ones face chronic or life-limiting illness.
Learn more about WJCS caregiver support services and programs.
