RespiteMatch.com Health Blog

Responsibilities can be divided according to a range of criteria. Here are a few of them:
Dividing responsibilities among family members is one way to approach the complex
demands of caregiving.

ABILITY
One member of your family may be good at fixing
meals. Another at fixing cars. And yet another
may simply be a good companion. Take a
critical look at the family members and friends
who are willing to help. What are their occupations?
What are their hobbies? What are their
particular skills? Deciding who can do what is
often the best place to start.

DESIRE
Even though a person has particular skills, he or
she may not want to provide them. Someone
who works as a nurse all day, for instance, may
not want to be an informal nurse at night and
on the weekends. After you figure out what people
are good at, you’ll want to ask everyone
what they would like to do—and some of the
answers may surprise you.

LOCATION
For some kinds of help, it is best to choose
someone who lives close to the relative. For daily
care needs or emergency/crisis management, the
closer the caregiver lives the better. For needs
that are weekly or monthly, such as weeding the
garden or small home repairs,
driving a short distance may be fine. For those
who live far away, telephone calls and letters
might be the best help they can give. Look at the
locations of all possible caregivers, and rank
them according to the jobs that need to be done.

TIME
No one has enough time to do everything; that
is why you divide up the responsibilities. What
you need to figure out is how much time each
person has and when they have it. Some responsibilities
need to be handled every evening,
some at random times throughout the day and
some during the weekend.

EQUIPMENT
Look at what equipment and supplies each person
has—such as a car, a truck or a computer—
this is another way of assigning tasks and
responsibilities, particularly those that require
some form of equipment.

OTHER RESPONSIBILITIES
Some of the relatives and friends will have other
responsibilities—such as young children, a disabled
spouse or a particularly demanding job—
which will limit the time and effort they can
commit to caregiving.

When confronted with the complex needs of an
elder needing care, families often decide to
divide up the responsibilities so that the caregiving
does not end up being one person’s job. If
one family member has some free time and
enjoys driving, she could be the one responsible
for providing some transportation for the relative.

If another is a skilled home repairman, he
would be a good choice to to work on home
maintenance for the relative.