Caring Teams enables professionals, aides, volunteers, patients and caregivers – plus working adults – to collaborate on solving each piece of the Wellness Puzzle, as illustrated below. The content draws from a rich range of videos, booklets and stories.-
We are currently seeking non-profit organizations , foundations and worksites who will collaborate with us to improve the wellness of senior, adults and teens, by creating a new iteration of the Caring Teams programs that will be available on smartphones, tablets and PCs.
Mini-grants ranging from $250 to $1,000 will be available to community collaborators who would commit to:
- having four or more of your staff or members participate in a four part training program that would certify them as “Caring Team Coaches:” followed by another four sessions that would certify them to lead online groups as “Caring Team Leaders:
- using the simple steps in our program manual to launch the program (through smartphone, tablets and PCs) to the rest of your staff, your members and your community
- participating in a “community collaborative session” to report on their experience and make suggestions for improving this
- encouraging participants to complete a confidential pre and post survey so we can measure the impact of this program on improving physical, emotional and spiritual wellness.
At the bottom of this page, you will find evaluations of our current program – which was honored by AARP’s Social Impact Award as “a simple mind-body-spirit program for seniors, adults and teens of any faith, or no faith” –
To learn more, please contact: [email protected]
or visit: www.LivingWellNow.info
Participants can choose from these topics in the Less Stress, Better Health and More Love Workbook or from your Smartphone, Tablet or PC beginning in 2023 (assuming that funding is received.)
The core skills that we teach participants are four Satisfaction Skills...
…which can improve communication, reduce stress, enhance forgiveness , deepen prayer and increase your sensitivity to those whose gender, generation, race, religion, politics or sexual orientation is different than yours.
Plus we teach a Planning Poem and a Learning Poem that can help anyone solve each piece of his or her Wellness Puzzle.
A summary of how the four Satisfaction Skills and the two poems are integrated can be found on the last page of our Less Stress, Better Health and More Love workbook, and is pictured below.
EVALUATIONS
Our evidence-based programs have been well received by caregivers, patients, volunteers, aides, as well as professionals providing medical, emotional and spiritual care. (See summaries at the bottom of this page.)
For our upcoming project, we aim to measure improvement in emotional health and mental health as well as increased civic engagement and volunteering among our participants through self-administered, confidential surveys. Participants will be invited to complete these surveys (using well-validated items) before they begin our program and at the completion of our program, as well as a six-month follow-up.
We will use a quasi-experimental design using naturally occurring groups, with participants from organizations on our “wait list” serving as controls. We will track demographic data and whether the participant participated in an in-person workshop or an online workshop that may be either synchronous (i.e., led by a facilitator who breaks the larger group into smaller groups for discussion and reflection) or asynchronous (i.e., each participant proceeds at his or her own pace without any online interaction with other participants).
Thus, at the conclusion of this three-year project, in addition to interim reports, we will be able to assess the relative impacts of demographics, as well as type and duration of program participation (as well as self-help behaviors including the Satisfaction Skills, prayer and volunteerism ) on the outcomes we will measure.
We will also employ interviewers who will explore the impact of our program on emotional, social, physical and spiritual factors that cannot be captured by a survey.
This summary from participants (who served as volunteers through the Health Association of Niagara County, Inc. ) was from an anonymous survey they completed after one 90 minute Less Stress, Better Health and More Love introductory workshop.
This evaluation is from 56 participants who attended one two hour introductory workshop, titled “Forgiving Yourself, Others and God,” which used the same Less Stress, Better Health and More Love workbook. It taught by Rev. Brian McCaffrey, Kathy DeLoughry – my program development and presentation partner – and me.
PROFESSIONALS AND AIDES:
After a two-part training sessions for professionals (e.g., nurses, social workers) at the Health Association we asked participants if the skills learned through our “Less Stress, Better Health and More Love” booklet effectively addressed both emotional and medical problems:
- 91% agreed that the Satisfaction Skills (awareness, affirmations, assertiveness and acceptance( could reduce stress
- 96% agreed the Satisfaction Skills skills could improve communication
- 92% agreed that the “Learning Plan” (remember goals and check your signs. Take some steps and learn each time) could reduce stress
- 85% agreed that this Learning Plan could also control chronic illness