Team Up - Family and Friends Really Do Want to Help Care for Loved Ones

Are you overwhelmed by caregiving responsibilities and costs? Do you feel like it’s ALL on you?

The number of adult children who are caring for an aging parent – either with personal care or financial assistance – has more than tripled in the past 15 years. During this same period, we’ve faced chronic wage stagnation, longer workdays (the US now leads the world in paid hours worked per week), a severe recession and a retirement crisis. This has placed an incredible amount of stress on a generation of middle-aged Americans who are in many cases supporting both their children and parents at the same time. And it’s taking its toll. A recent MetLife study found that adult children 50 and over who are caring for a parent are more likely to have fair to poor health than those who are not caregivers.

Care3 was created with you in mind, as well as those who are caring for a special needs child or a loved one facing a serious illness.

The idea is to leverage the connectivity of the mobile age and the simplicity of text messaging to create a tool that facilitates easy communication, where everyone pitches in and no one feels alone. As we see it, the biggest hurdle to spreading the responsibilities of caregiving amongst many hands is twofold: primary caregivers don’t know how to ask for help, and family and friends don’t know what they can do to help. As a result, the primary caregiver ends up trying to do it all, while other family and friends often feel helpless, guilty and disconnected.

So how do we alleviate your burden so that you can get a break and take proper care of your own health and finances? By assembling a team of family and close friends – the ones who are always saying, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do!” – and making it incredibly easy and natural to request help or volunteer to do something. Care3 enables you to send out one specific message to the entire team – saving the time and energy of making multiple phone calls – and find out quickly who can lend a hand. Family and friends can simply click “accept” to take on a task, or they can message the group expressing their thanks for those who take on the care action.

With Care3, everyone’s in the loop and working together to ensure their loved one is happy and healthy. Some of the ways the care team can help out including providing rides, daycare, social visits, prescription pickups or answers. Team members can also offer to purchase something that a loved one needs – such as diabetic home supplies or a new robe for Pops – to help share the costs. This takes a tremendous weight off to know that there is a group of people there to help you whenever there is a scheduling conflict, a financial crunch or just a really crazy week. No matter how busy life gets, asking for help only takes a few seconds with Care3. And it can make all the difference.

If you are a primary caregiver, start getting the help you need today. Your stress will decrease, your health will benefit, and you’ll be a better caregiver in the long run. Plus, you’ll be giving others who truly want to be involved a chance to do just that, so that everyone feels good knowing that they are contributing and keeping an eye out from both near and far. Instead of being isolated and at the end of your rope, experience the togetherness, support and relief of teaming up with Care3.