© 2024 KRWG
News that Matters.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

New Mexico Releases Family Caregiver Plan

Every year, there are around 419,000 New Mexicans who act as a family caregiver for a loved one. Most New Mexicans do not meet the economic threshold to qualify for Medicaid, and are also not able to afford full-time private care- leaving many of the caregiving responsibilities to family members.

Cathy Lindsay has been acting as a family caregiver for her parents for a little over a year now.

“My father has recently been diagnosed with dementia,” Lindsay said. “He’s just starting out. My mom has arthritis quite bad she can no longer drive. So, I have been having to take time off from work to transport them to doctors appointments or any other facilities they need.”

Lindsay says when her father was diagnosed; the doctor was not helpful in pointing them to valuable resources.

“They told us what his diagnosis was,” Lindsay said. “And the drug they were going to try to start him out on to see if it would help him. But no information was given to me on who I could contact for help on caregiving.”

Secretary for the Aging and Long Term Services Department Myles Copeland says realizing many were in the same situation as Kathy Lindsay they spent a year and a half developing a plan for caregivers.

“Whether it’s shopping, taking care of the groceries,” Copeland said. “Managing medications, managing finances for their loved ones. Doing complicated medical tasks, particularly when someone is leaving the hospital, moving back into the community, they do an awful lot and most of the time we’re not prepared for that, nobody goes to school to become a family caregiver, gets training to become a family caregiver.”

Copeland said the main part of the plan involved making sure family caregivers were able to access the resources the state already had available.

“It identified what the resources are that were available for family caregivers,” Copeland said. “It identified what their needs are, and then came up with goals and strategies to try and help address those needs. We recognize that the number one thing family caregivers here in New Mexico said that they wanted was more information about resources in their community, so it’s not enough simply to have a resource that’s going to be helpful, our family caregivers aren’t making way to those resources.”

Copeland says they also put an emphasis on planning before you get to the point where you need a caregiver.

“We also need from a statewide perspective to do a better job with managing our legal, our financial, our medical planning,” Copeland said. “Because all of that winds up relieving the caregiving burden that our loved ones face when it comes time to take care of us, so if we have made those decisions it allows us to exercise our independence make choices about how we want to live our life at the end.”

If you want to access the resources in the family caregiver plan call their office at 1-800-432-2080.
 

Samantha Sonner was a multimedia reporter for KRWG- TV/FM.