The Purpose of the Symposium
Much activity this Spring 2008 has focused on planning and organizing a State of the Science Symposium on Family Caregiving. The Symposium was designed for Professionals in Social Work and Nursing and was held on January 29 and 30, 2008 in Washington,DC.
The purposes of this Caregiving Symposium was to: evaluate the State of the Science on best practices for supporting family caregivers; identify factors that influence nurses’ and social workers’ abilities to implement best practices; and develop an agenda for developing additional evidence-based practices and support models. The symposium was conceptualized by Dr. Susan Reinhard as a partnership with many other agencies.
Reinhard served as co-director (along with Diana Mason, Editor, American Journal of Nursing) of a symposium entitled “State of the Science: Nurses and Social Workers Supporting FamilyCaregivers”—a collaborative project with the AARP Foundation—that sponsored the conference in partnership with the Family Caregiver Alliance (FCA), the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), the Administration on Aging Family Caregiver Support Program, Rutgers University Institute for Health Policy, and the American Academy of Nursing (AAN). You will note that most AARP work is done thru partnerships. This symposium is another example of partnerships formed between stakeholder organizations interested in family caregiving.
My Role in the Symposium
My participation consisted of serving on a Steering Committee to plan the symposium. All such events take many hours of meeting in person and also having conference calls to make sure Symposium goes smoothly. During the Symposium I was chosen to facilitate one of the discussion groups.
The outcome from these discussion groups was to identify competencies and strategies to enhance support for family caregivers and also to identify research priorities. I was responsible for summarizing the Research Priorities which became one outcome from our group work at the Symposium. The Research Priorities will become part of the final report.
The Symposium final report will be widely disseminated, including being published as a special supplement to the American Journal of Nursing, in September 2008, and also as a special supplement to the Journal of Social Work Education. The Advisory Committee is still hard at work formalizing the following final documents: 1. Knowledge and Competencies needed by nurses and social workers to support family caregivers; 2. Recommendations for Developing Nurse and Social Worker Competencies to support Family Caregiving; 3. Primary Recommendations; 4. Recommendations for Strategies to Increase the Ability of Nurses and Social Workers to Support Family Caregivers and lastly 5. A Proposed Agenda for Research on Family Caregiving.
