Easter Seals awarded grant from the Retirement Research Foundation to bridge end-of-life care and adult day services

CHICAGO, Aug. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- The Retirement Research Foundation recently awarded Easter Seals a $220,000 grant to better meet needs of persons at the end of their lives -- no matter their care setting -- while promoting dignity and choice for millions of families across the country. The new Easter Seals project will bridge the existing knowledge and collaboration gap between two vital community-based services, hospice/palliative care and adult day services.

By 2025, the number of persons age 65 and older is estimated to grow by 80 percent. The need for direct services for individuals approaching the end of their lives is more critical than ever.

About Easter Seals' Enhancing Community-Based Options for End-of-Life Care

Easter Seals' two-year initiative, Enhancing Community-Based Options for End-of-Life Care, launching this month, will create tools and training resources to help adult day services personnel and hospice/palliative care personnel across the country better understand each other's roles and integrate clinical practices, programs, and policies.

Easter Seals will convene a National Advisory Council with experts from both the adult day and palliative care communities to collaborate on improving end-of-life care. Through providing leadership, training, policy recommendations and tools & materials, this initiative will enable adult day and hospice organizations to collaborate and provide more comprehensive services for people with life limiting illness and their families.

"No one should have to approach death without sufficient pain management, compassion, and support. Too many people experience the end of their lives with untreated pain, unaddressed depression and other mental health problems, and debilitating physical symptoms due to a lack of information and support," says Lisa Peters-Beumer, Project Director, Easter Seals. "This new program will help us begin to make a real difference for many families during such a difficult time."

"Family members who provide care often experience extreme emotional and physical stress without adequate support from professionals, experience economic pressures, and become ill themselves as a result of the pressing demands of caring for a loved one who is dying. Many feel forced into making decisions regarding care arrangements without understanding their options," adds Peters-Beumer.

About The Retirement Research Foundation

For more than 20 years, The Retirement Research Foundation has been at the forefront of efforts to meet the ever-changing needs of older Americans, investing more than $150 million to help build a network of innovative and skilled individuals and institutions committed to addressing aging and retirement issues.

Established by the late John D. MacArthur and endowed in 1978, the Foundation invests approximately $9 million each year to support efforts that enable older adults to live at home or in residential settings that facilitate independent living, improve the quality of care at nursing homes, leverage the wisdom and experience of older adults and promote community involvement, and increase understanding of the aging process and age-associated diseases through various education and advocacy efforts. To learn more, visit http://www.rrf.org/.

About Easter Seals

For 85 years, Easter Seals has been providing services that help children and adults with disabilities gain greater independence. Our primary services -- medical rehabilitation, job training and employment, child care, adult day services, and camping and recreation -- benefit more than one million individuals with disabilities and their families each year through more than 500 centers nationwide. Support children and adults with disabilities at http://www.easterseals.com/.

Source: National Easter Seal Society