With apologies to Joni Mitchell, Ellen Travers, LMSW, has seen caregiving from “both sides now.”
In 2006, the then stay-at-home mother of four cared for her father, James Barker, as he was dying of heart disease. Twelve years later, she would nurse husband Paul Travers through his fatal battle with metastatic renal cancer. In between, the caregiver would be cared for as she successfully struggled with breast cancer (2013-14).
“I had had all these experiences,” she recalled. “The caregiving center was my lifeline.”
That would be Northern Westchester Hospital”™s Ken Hamilton Caregivers Center in Mount Kisco, where Travers became a trained volunteer in 2008-09 and ultimately its program manager, succeeding founding program manager Jerri Rosenfeld in January. It was a case of perfect timing, Travers said, as Rosenfeld was retiring, and Travers was newly armed with a master”™s degree in social work from Fordham University. (The Bronx native had earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from what is now Iona University and spent her early career with the advertising agencies Benton & Bowles and Jordan, McGrath, Case & Taylor.)
Now she heads a center that has become the template for 24 similar facilities at hospitals across the country, including Phelps Hospital in Sleepy Hollow, which like Northern Westchester Hospital is part of Northwell Health; six Northwell Health hospitals on Long Island; Burke Rehabilitation Hospital in White Plains; White Plains Hospital, part of Montefiore Einstein; three Montefiore Einstein hospitals in the Bronx; Danbury Hospital and Norwalk Hospital, part of Nuvance Health; Stamford Hospital; and Staten Island University Hospital. Among the other hospitals in the Caregiving Center Consortium are the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford Medical Center and the Mayo Clinic in Arizona.
The number of these centers has grown steadily since Marian Hamilton founded Northern Westchester Hospital”™s program in 2006 ”“ spurred by caring for husband Ken, who died of mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer often associated with asbestos exposure, in 2004, and raising funds that were matched by a corporate donor. (The physical Ken Hamilton Caregivers Center — a 900-square-foot dedicated space featuring a cozy hybrid work area, a room with a massage chair, a tranquility room with Zen décor and Travers”™ office, with its library of resources — opened in 2007.)
The need for such places is exploding. According to the Urban Institute, the number of Americans ages 65 and older will have more than doubled by 2040, reaching 80 million. The number of adults ages 85 and older, the group most often needing help with basic personal care, will have nearly quadrupled by then. Because younger people work and pay the taxes that finance Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other “entitlements” ”“ as in you are entitled to these benefits as you paid into them ”“ an aging population means fewer workers and thus a greater strain on these programs.
Unless you are wealthy or poor, in which case Medicaid will pay to have a family member care for you, you and your caregiver are likely to be caught in what Travers called “the middle of the (caregiving) doughnut.” (Congress passed the”¯Recognize, Assist, Include, Support and Engage (RAISE) Family Caregivers Act”¯in 2018, which established the Family Caregiving Advisory Council, tasked with creating the country’s first national Family Caregiver Strategy. But that doesn”™t help in the short term.)
The bottom line: “Custodial care is a private-paying situation,” she said, adding that this can be mitigated by long-term care insurance, whose premiums costs thousands of dollars per year.
Navigating such concerns, along with the hospital, is the job of Travers and her team of trained volunteers, who go room to room at Northern Westchester Hospital each day. (There are 10 volunteers ”“ a third of the number there were before Covid ”“ plus Jill Gottlieb, replications specialist, who coordinates with the other caregiving centers on the consortium”™s biannual symposia and other issues; and Shqipe Lulanaj, lead administrative support coordinator.)
The team”™s first mandate at the start of the day? Reassuring the caregiver. “We say, ”˜We know the hospital is taking care of the patient,”™” Travers said. “ ”˜We”™re here to take care of you.”™” The response, she added, is a sense of relief and a lightening of being, knowing that there are people to help educate the caregiver about the road head and to facilitate communications between the caregiver and the case manager. Such help doesn”™t end with the hospital stay.
“Once you”™re discharged, we don”™t want to lose track of you,” she said. The Stay in Touch aspect of the program is designed to ensure that caregivers are able to cope with one of the greatest challenges of the role ”“ isolation. Travers said the program has served 95,845 caregivers since it began.
What she has learned ”“ what she would like others to take away from the center ”“ is that “we can”™t control life”™s twists and turns. But we can reach out for support. There is support. We feel grateful to do the work that we do.”
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