In church this morning we were reading in First Timothy 5, but I kept reading beyond the verse referenced and saw this in verse 16: “If any woman who is a believer has widows in her family, she should help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who are really in need”.

Last Wednesday I attended the Kentucky Family Caregivers Day in Frankfort. Did you know?

• Kentucky ranks 46th in the nation in support of family caregivers.
• There are nearly 650,000 family caregivers in Kentucky. The work they do is valued at over $7 billion per year.
• Kentucky family caregivers average 18 hours per week caring for a family member.
• 69% of individuals needing home care had no home health (a nurse) care visit after the hospital discharge.
• 46% of family caregivers perform medical/nursing tasks including managing medications and giving injections or infusions.
• Most family caregivers receive little or no training in managing care and medications.
• The average Kentucky family caregiver is 55 or more years of age. 62% are female.
• 60% of caregivers also are full time employees. 1 in 4 employees 25 or more years of age are caregivers.
• 22% of those full-time workers provide 21 or more hours per week in care giving.
• 72% of workers 40 years of age and over say work flexibility would help them with much-needed work/life balance.
• 68% of family caregivers must use some of their own money to provide care.
• 39% report feeling financially strapped.

So, in a nutshell, there are a lot of women who work full time jobs who are caring for a family member who needs help to live, including medical treatments, and these same women caregivers are not getting much help from anybody, and especially the KY state government. I was one of those women at age 51 when I became the primary caregiver for my in-laws. It was one of the most difficult years of my life.

Imagine if someone dropped off someone who needed care on your doorstep. What would you do? Take them to a hospital? They would not admit them because their needs would not require a hospital admission. Take them to a nursing home? They would need to have a lot of money or they would be shipped far away to an available Medicaid bed. Could you live with yourself knowing the kind of care they would receive as a Medicaid recipient in a nursing home where they would get no visitors?

Let’s do what God wants us to do and serve others above ourselves. Please contact your state legislators and urge them to pass laws that promote home and community based services. MedicAID is currently too complicated and puts an additional burden on the caregivers to manage. And please contact your federal government representatives and ask them to pass laws that would allow people to choose between recovering in a nursing home or an adult day center after being in the hospital. As it is now, MediCARE only pays for the nursing home.

May you and yours have a beautiful and blessed first week of March!