FAMILY CAREGIVER ALLIANCE (FCA)

Family Caregiver Alliance envisions an America where every family caregiver is adequately supported, with information, skills, tools (including caregiver respite) – and is not impoverished by the experience. Moreover we seek a future where every system is equipped to care for caregivers and puts them as integral to family centered care strategies and practices.

To this end, we work to improve the quality of life for family caregivers - the backbone of our nation's long-term care system—through actionable education, direct services, results-driven advocacy and quality research. The shared common challenges of those who care - adult children, spouses, partners, other relatives and friends—are: isolation, lack of information, major upheaval in family and work life, financial strain, marginal recognition of their important role by doctors and healthcare institutions, and more. These obstacles conspire to put the health and well-being of the caregiver at risk.

Our commitment is to empower and sustain the critical work of the family caregivers who provide long-term care at home for adult loved ones (18yrs and older) living with chronic, life impairing health conditions. We employ core values of respect, options, quality, innovation, diversity, collaboration and efficiency towards this aim https://www.caregiver.org/about-fca.

The Family Caregiver Alliance Board Directors and senior management team recently met in May, 2023 for our annual Strategic Planning meeting.

Our key strategies are to be a trusted source of knowledge about family caregivers and to be a catalyst to ensure that caregivers are fully recognized and supported. Our tactics are to provide direct services to family caregivers, those they care for and also to the organizations that care for them. We research best practices, collect data to analyze, and utilize findings to provide value in all that we do, while also working to share our findings to stakeholders - family caregivers, funders, policy makers, health systems, the media and others. For more information, see "Evaluation of Service Delivery and System Change" by the California Resource Centers, conducted by the UC Davis School of Nursing.

Specifically, FCA delivers programs at the local, regional and national levels to support family caregivers. As the Bay Area Caregiver Resource Center, part of a network of 11 centers throughout the state, FCA provides a range of caregiver education resources and services including: in-depth comprehensive caregiver assessment (in-person, by phone), care planning specific to the caregiver's need , and caregiver classes on a wide variety of topics including managing dementia care behaviors, stress management, self-care for caregivers, problem solving and decision making skills and more (in person and online), respite care (in-home, adult day care, overnight, Camp for Caring), legal/financial guidance (fact sheets and vouchers for consultation with an attorney), individual and family counseling, caregiver support groups (in-person and online), information and referral. FCA maintains an ever-growing and often-referenced, peer reviewed library of caregiver fact and tip sheets available online for caregivers to access free of charge at their convenience.

FCA established the National Center on Caregiving (NCC) in 2001, to respond to requests for information from state governments and other public and private organizations nationally seeking consultation on how to address caregiver needs in their state or how to replicate a caregiver resource center model. In addition, we have consulted with health organizations in British Columbia and other parts of Canada seeking guidance to develop their own caregiver assessment tools and procedures. Today we are actively involved in working to build policy to improve support for caregivers through our work with the Administration on Aging, Center for Medicaid and Medicare, partnerships with AARP and leaders in health and long-term services and support arenas.

Our Board of Directors and leadership team are committed to implementing our strategic plan with an aim to achieve our organizational goals. We actively recruit board and staff members who possess the skill and capacity to help build our programmatic reach and financial capacity while also engaging in strategic partnerships to fulfill our mission.

We are successful thanks to the high quality expertise, skill and experience of our staff and leadership team. Executive Director Kathleen A. Kelly is a leader in the caregiving and aging communities.

FCA sustains a high (95%) caregiver satisfaction rating by caregivers who receive direct services (caregiver assessment, care planning, training & education, respite, legal financial consultation, therapeutic counseling) from FCA's Bay Area Caregiver Resource Center. For Caregivers of Military Veterans, FCA leads wellness classes and provides caregiver consultation specific to their needs.

The trend rate of site visitors seeking trusted caregiver support, information and resources to our website, www.caregiver.org continues on an upward trajectory surpassing 1.8 million visitors a year.

Written in response to caregiver information requests and/or for professionals seeking to best serve family caregivers, FCA offers a library of more than 200 fact and tip sheets, check lists, reports, toolkits and white papers on critical caregiver self-help topics, including some translated into Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean. We are actively building a new collection of caregiver “how to" pocket videos in response to customer requests.

Launched FCA CareNav, a virtual caregiver resource center, offering a robust resource to family caregiver anywhere, anytime. In addition, FCACareNav creates a personalized client record using vetted assessment measures that include stress, depression, health, health care utilization, and social supports. The client record enables the tracking of service utilization and client changes over time.

Invited to collaborate and/or serve as a content expert for a wide variety of efforts including:

- FCA is a founding member of the Home Alone Alliance along with AARP, United Hospital Fund and the UC Davis Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing. This year we were actively engaged in work to raise awareness and work to change the way health care organizations and professionals interface with family caregiver especially for those caregivers, approx. 46% who say they perform medical/nursing tasks at home.

- Now in its sixteenth year, FCA successfully coordinates the Innovations in Alzheimer Disease Caregiving Legacy Awards, in partnership with The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation of Los Angeles, CA and Bader Philanthropies, Inc. of Milwaukee, WI.

Over our 40+ year history, FCA has gained a well-earned reputation locally and nationally for its quality of work, direct caregiver services delivery, caregiver policy advocacy and practical research, and has been instrumental in moving the ball forward toward recognition and support of the family and friend caregiver.