Supportive Services
The National Family Caregiver Support Program (NFCSP) became law in 2000 under the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act and provides funding for supportive services to grandfamilies. Reauthorized and amended in 2006, NFCSP provides federal funding for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Aging (AoA) to administer the program. The AoA funds local Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs) to provide supportive services to grandparents and other relatives aged 55 and older who are relative caregivers of children. Supportive services fall into 5 categories designated by NFCSP:
- information to caregivers about available services;
- assistance to caregivers in gaining access to the services;
- individual counseling, organization of support groups, training to assist the caregivers in the areas of health, nutrition, financial literacy, and in making decisions and solving problems relating to their caregiving roles;
- respite care to enable caregivers to be temporarily relieved from their
caregiving responsibilities; and
- supplemental services, on a limited basis, to complement the care
provided by caregivers.
Read more about this topic: Grandfamily
Famous quotes containing the words supportive and/or services:
“If it is to be done well, child-rearing requires, more than most activities of life, a good deal of decentering from one’s own needs and perspectives. Such decentering is relatively easy when a society is stable and when there is an extended, supportive structure that the parent can depend upon.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life; and homely services rendered for love’s sake have in them a poetry that is immortal.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)