Maureen Templeman teaches gerontology — or the science of aging — at Missouri State University in Springfield.
She recently launched a new project called the Southwest Missouri CARE Collective that’s designed to create a new opportunity for mutual aid between caregivers.
For the next few weeks, we'll be sharing the stories of caregivers from throughout the state.
Maureen Templeman: A lot of the caregiver support that's out there focuses on, maybe, paid care or policy level, you know, kind of bigger level things.
And I thought, “What if we tried something that was a little bit more grassroots where caregivers just kind of connected with each other and helped one another.”
I think it's a way to empower caregivers because they are able to not just, you know, not just feel like they're the ones that need to be helped, but that they can also offer something in return.
So, the main part of the program is a web platform — essentially, it's a platform where caregivers can go and they sign up for a membership. It's free.
And they then have their own member dashboard. We ask them to, maybe, say what is their caregiving situation, and what kinds of things do they think they might be able to contribute, and then they can post if they need help with something.
So, for example, they might say, “I'm caregiving for my dad. He has started to wander recently, and I'm really nervous that he's going to leave in the middle of the night, and he's going to get lost, so I really need somebody to come over and help me install an extra lock or a camera or something like that.”
Because they may not know how to do that or have the time or resources to do that.
So, then somebody in the CARE Collective would see that and say, “Hey, I could do something like that.” And then, in return, when you post, you also can say what you have to offer that person.
So you might say, “I can bake you a pie,” or “I can pick something up for you when I go to the grocery store and have it here for you when you come by to help me with my lock.”
It's supposed to be kind of like a one-to-one kind of mutual aid program.
Then ultimately, when we have enough members, it's a collective in the sense that they are supposed to drive the direction of the organization.
So, one of the things that we plan on offering is free trainings, but I want the caregivers to tell me what they want, you know, one of the main recommendations for caregiver interventions is that it's supposed to be person-centered and person-first.
You have to be a caregiver to join the CARE Collective. It's not for volunteers because it's not meant to be a charity. It's meant to be mutual exchange and kind of empowering, you know?
So, I think in that way, just being in a community of people who understand each other, but also, I really think that that mutual exchange piece of it will just help with overall well-being because it will give caregivers just this sense of empowerment and this sense of, “I'm not being, I'm not a charity case. I'm somebody who's contributing equally to this community.”
