Community Demonstration Sites

Background

As stated in the 2007 report “Caregiving in America”, issued by the International Longevity Center - US and the Schmieding Center, the United States is in the midst of a significant and growing caregiving crisis. About 1.4 million older Americans live in nursing homes, nearly 6 million receive care at home, and significant numbers go completely without the help they need.

RCI believes there must be a fundamental shift in how our nation values caregiving and caregivers. We believe that all sectors of society must come together in new ways to develop solutions. The long-term goal is for community agencies, hospitals, and other groups serving caregivers to adopt caregiving programs that have been proven effective through research.

While we realize that many interventions with proven positive outcomes for caregivers have already been developed, most have not been translated into programs at the community level – programs that really help the caregivers. The Community Demonstration Sites of the NQCN are taking evidence-based research and putting it into practice in real world settings. By actively sharing lessons learned, the sites will help identify best practices in effective implementation of evidence-based programs for caregivers.