Miami

As more of the nation's elderly and disabled opt to receive care in their homes, respite care — which relieves family members from the full-time job of caring for a loved one — is gaining importance. For many home care patients, however, respite care is unaffordable, unavailable or, due to cultural or language barriers, often unappealing.

Now, a new program — developed by the University of Maryland Center on Aging in cooperation with the Corporation for National and Community Service and state and local agencies — seeks to provide volunteer respite care to those who most need it, tapping a non-traditional, yet highly qualified pool of volunteers in the process.

Each of three pilot projects facilitated by the Center on Aging recruits and trains older adults — with a median age of 63 — as respite caregivers. One project in particular, Latino Elderly located in Miami's Little Havana community, pairs about 30 Hispanic caregivers with more than 70 Hispanic patients.

“The members, or volunteers, all are from the local Hispanic community, as are the clients they serve,” says Christine Kucera of the Florida Department of Elder Affairs, which sponsors the project. “There's a huge need [for respite caregivers] in the community, especially given the shortage of caregivers who speak Spanish and who understand the unique Hispanic culture.”

And, Kucera explains, it's more difficult to find elderly volunteers in the Hispanic community because elderly Hispanic women usually already are caregivers and caregiving is not a traditional role for Hispanic men. Another challenge: Training a mostly Spanish-speaking group of volunteers, which required Kucera and other program staff to translate program materials into Spanish. This, in turn, has motivated CNCS to start work on translating materials for other programs.

“It has been a challenge putting a program like this into that type of community,” Kucera says. “You can't take a traditional program and put it into a community that's so culturally diverse.”

Latino Elderly, along with the two other pilot projects in West Palm Beach, Fla., and Chicago, specifically target the lifelong skills and experiences of seniors to engage them in continuous community service and to promote individual lifelong learning, says Jack Steele, a researcher with the Center on Aging. “It also meets the basic community need of using seniors to meet the needs of other seniors,” he says. “The intent is to recruit and train older persons as community catalysts to provide health intervention, education and outreach services that support and enhance the public health service delivery system.”

The target age for program participants is 50-plus, with a median participant age of 63, according to Steele. All volunteers are required to go through vigorous training, including classroom-based sessions and a community-based internship, and to serve the community on a continual basis for an extended period of time, typically a year. In return, volunteers receive a living stipend and an educational reward, which can be used at a four-year university or vocational school. The emphasis on education is particularly appealing to baby-boomer volunteers, Steele says.

“This baby-boomer generation [of volunteers] is looking for meaningful public community service projects and is better educated,” Steele says. “These are not your typical volunteers. The [community service system] is going to have to refocus and shift the way it thinks about volunteers.”