School of Social Welfare

Aim: To understand staff perceptions of critical issues in caring for persons with intellectual disability (ID) and advanced dementia. Background: There has been growing interest in addressing resource, training, and service redesign issues including an increase in collaborative practices in response to the growing incidence of dementia among persons with ID. Most recently this has included consideration of the specific

... related themes be identified that will aid in the develop-ment of strategies to offer ... Both immigrants and persons born in the US were represented among families, staff, and community ... notes, a number of cross-cutting key themes related to cultural and acculturation influences on ...

A demonstration project was undertaken in the state of New York to assess how area agencies on aging (AAAs) would approach outreach and direct aid to families caring for someone with a developmental disability. It was found that AAAs organized their outreach and direct-aid efforts using three main approaches: direct operation, contract operations, and multi-organizational. They generally organized staff time so that about two days per week of effort was devoted to undertaking outreach activities, conducting community education, and providing casework and referrals for target families. Four major distinctions were identified that differentiated work with older carers of persons with a developmental disability from that with other kinds of carers: complexity of problems presented by households identified, vagaries of fiscal resources, diverse household composition, and planning for eventualities. It was concluded that targeting AAAs for outreach and providing help to these carers was effective and productive and should be replicated throughout the United States.