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Volunteers needed for Citrus DFA

Citrus County Chronicle - 2/19/2018

This is in response to an editorial on Feb. 2, 2018 titled "Developing dementia services guide tricky."

The initial story in the article about Elaine Bamford and Dementia Friendly America of CitrusCounty was somewhat skewed. Elaine Bamford was an incredible lady; she was a caregiver for her husband with stage 3/4 Alzheimer's disease. She took an early retirement from teaching to care for her husband at home.

When that was no longer doable she placed him in a facility. Daily, to refresh his memory, she would go through a host of materials about his life. I found her amazing.

In the spring of 2016 she came to me, Gailen Spinka owner of Comfort Keepers, and ask for my help implementing a new program she had discovered while researching Alzheimer's Disease: Dementia Friendly America (DFA). I agreed to co-run the program with her and we could set up the program under Continuity of Care of CitrusCounty, the local networking group for the healthcare industry.

August of 2016, we became certified to participate in the DFA Program and were the first community to implement the program in Florida.

Dementia Friendly America of CitrusCounty (DFACC) is alive but we need help. Many community leaders have worked hard to build the infrastructure.

Now we are ready to make an impact on the community, but we need boots on the ground ? Volunteers. We need volunteers that can make phone calls, pass out materials, become instructors, perform evaluations and more. Like every community organization we also need money to continue operation. We need dependable volunteers.

The Initial steps in the DFA program were to garner support from various businesses and community organizations, conduct a community survey on community knowledge of dementia, and find

financial sponsors.

Being an extremely large project, Elaine and I put together an action team of people who would give us a good start. We included people like Heather Yates (CCSO), Joanna Castle (YMCA), April Zay (Citrus CountyChronicle), Pat Coles replaced by Joanne Granger (Director of CountySupport Services), and Carolyn Reyes (Comfort Keepers). The Action Team consisted of working executives and Elaine Bamford. Elaine was very organized and organized the "Community Survey" portion of the project, hosted a support group and memory cafe. April with support from the Chronicle staff generated the design for our marketing materials and handouts. She also hosts a support group. Carolyn along with a host of people verified the names/contact info for our Dementia Resource Guide; which was designed by the Chronicle and published in the Spring of 2017. Karen Kline RN, parish nurse for First United Methodist Church of Homosassa developed an assessment tool to recognize community organizations as "DFACC-Dementia Friendly." Meanwhile others generated a website (dementiafriendlyamericacitruscounty.org) and to share information about dementia, a Facebook Page (Citrus CountyDementia Friendly America). The Facebook page has been our most successful way of providing caregivers with information.

As time went on membership in the action committee changed. Most who left the Team did so because of changing work requirements. Elaine Bamford moved to another state. Many community organization boards, like the action team for DFACC, are relatively small and the directors on the board are also the worker bees. This is true until the organization becomes large enough to hire worker bees or can develop a following of volunteers. Losing Elaine was difficult for the Team because she was our boots on the ground. As much as we have accomplished, we now have difficulty moving forward without a team of boots on the ground.

DFACC held an event Jan. 9, 2018 called "Reaching Out" that was an effort to bring together community leaders to rebuild the DFACC Action Team. The focus of this event was churches, as many are already addressing dementia. We invited every church in Citrus County for which we could find a mailing address; the turnout was poor. We thought we could both acknowledge existing programs as being dementia friendly and help support their programs. We looked at the churches as being the eyes and ears to watch over our senior population and help identify those that need support to caregive for someone with dementia.

"Those that need support to caregive for someone with dementia." Alzheimer's and many other diseases that have dementia symptoms progressively worsen regardless of medical treatment. Caregiving for someone with dementia is very demanding and as the disease progresses, for many becomes almost overbearing. Alzheimer's Family Organization, Alzheimer's Association, and DFACC have two primary goals; first to educate and identify resources for a caregiver, and then have them attend a support group. Support groups are a way to share experiences and learn from others, ways to relieve the stress on themselves and improve the quality of life for their loved one. DFACC has the additional goal of making our community "Dementia Friendly."

Now, getting back to the Dementia Resource Guide prepared by DFACC. Are resource guides tricky? Absolutely! The minute a guide goes to press, it is out of date: another organization closed, another organization opened, and another organization changed its name. DFACC chose to update the "Dementia Resource Guide" once a year. We do not have the resources to do it more frequently. For us publishing a Dementia Resource Guide was high priority. It was difficult to wade through the published information from years past to identify resources that were still available. What we did was compile, from many published lists and medical guides a master list of any resource we thought applicable to dementia. We then called each organization to verify it was still in operation and their contact information was correct. Those that we could verify were published in our Dementia Resource Guide. The Guide was completed in May 2017 and distribution began shortly thereafter.

To wrap this up, Dementia Friendly America of Citrus County is alive, but we need help. We need volunteers that can make phone calls, pass out materials, become instructors, perform evaluations and more. Like every community organization we need money to continue operation. Now that you know the real story of DFA of Citrus County, please help us out. To move forward we need both donations and volunteers. As much as we could use financial support we need dependable volunteers most.

For more information about DFACC, please contact Gailen Spinka at 352-697-2288.

Gailen Spinka is president of the Continuity of Care of Citrus County and chair of the Action Team for Dementia Friendly America of Citrus County.

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