Skills Needed for Advocating for your Loved One:

Educate yourself regarding your loved ones illness/and or disability.
Communicate efficiently and succinctly with healthcare professionals.
Recognize you are a healthcare consumer and deserve quality healthcare.
Understand you are an important member of the healthcare team.
Give input and ask questions.
Pick your battles and don’t sweat the small stuff.
Realize that sometimes it is the squeaky wheel which produces results.

We all go through varying stages of emotions when our lives have been transformed by becoming a family caregiver. Research has shown there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. All of these emotions are part of the framework which makes up our learning to adjust and cope to our life as a family caregiver while we watch someone we love struggle with chronic illness.

On occasion some become sufficiently angry and search for ways to deal with their anger by channeling it into a constructive endeavor and caring enough to become activists for a much larger cause. Sometimes we will find the energy and passion not only to advocate for our loved one’s well-being but for all family caregivers.

New Jersey’s Expert Home Care for Elders and Seniors provides care for your aging loved ones since 1984. Please call us when your loved one needs help – 800-848-2336.