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About HelpingYouCare®

Our Mission

HelpingYouCare® was founded by a caregiver, Connie Barnhart Koontz, and her husband David Koontz, with the support and guidance of a dedicated and caring team of advisors and contributors. Our purpose is to help you care for your aging parents & senior loved ones and for yourself, by providing the comprehensive, serious and helpful information, news, resources, education, practical tools, and support you need as a family caregiver, and by publishing useful health and wellness information that can help you and your senior loved ones prevent illness and stay healthy and active. Our further purpose is to give voice to your concerns and suggestions, as well as those of health care experts, toward the improvement of our health and long-term care systems. Our broader mission is to help meet the rapidly growing needs of caregivers and their senior loved ones as our population ages.

Dedication

Margaret R. Eidem Barnhart

HelpingYouCare® is dedicated in honor and loving memory of Connie’s Mother Margaret Eidem Barnhart, who exemplified caregiving and humanitarian service to all in need, throughout her life. Sadly, she passed away in September, 2009, but happily, she reached the age of nearly 94 years. The learning experiences in caring for her Mom helped Connie understand and resolve to help meet the growing needs of family caregivers, as our population ages.

Margaret had been a high school teacher, University Guidance Counselor to World War II Veterans, and an inspiring mentor to family and friends, as well as herself a family caregiver for several in her family. She was very supportive of this community service project, and contributed many good suggestions. With love and appreciation, we dedicate this website to her, and we hope, as did she, that this site can help other families in caring for your senior loved ones.

What is Found On This Site

See: At a Glance: What is On This Site & Where to Find it

How HelpingYouCare® Differs From Other Caregiver Sites

1. HelpingYouCare® — is a socially responsible company. As a Florida limited liability company, we are a for-profit company. But, our corporate purpose includes the mission to serve family caregivers, seniors, and the communities and society in which we operate.

HelpingYouCare® is owned and operated by Care-Help LLC, a Florida limited liability company. As such, we are a for-profit company. But, unlike the typical .com website that exists exclusively to maximize profits, our corporate purpose includes the mission to serve you, the caregiver or senior, and our communities.

2. AnswersForCare™ — in addition to original content in featured articles and columns, our AnswersForCare™ section includes our original reporting with links to other sources, providing a comprehensive portal to some of the best information & resources of the web on caregiving and elder care needs, personally selected, reported, and updated daily by our editors.

To our knowledge, HelpingYouCare® is one of the only sites that, in addition to our featured articles and columns, maintains through original reporting this kind of comprehensive portal to serious and trusted, non-commercial online information & resources, personally selected, reviewed, reported and organized specifically for caregivers, and updated on a daily basis.

Unlike a search engine, we do not aggregate the content of others via an automated algorithm. Our editors and contributors, all with relevant experience, sift through the information overload of the web and other media, including scientific and other professional literature. We weed out the purely commercial, and select what we feel is the most helpful information for caregivers. We review and report on it, like a news organization, and through our original reporting, updated daily, we organize, digest, and place the most useful news and information in context for you, and we provide links to other helpful resources for you as a family caregiver.

We carefully select and include links only to trusted sources, such as noted and reputable medical institutions, medical professionals, government and academic sources, and established and reputable nonprofit organizations, professional associations and news & journalism organizations. In each of our posts, we provide our original article or column, or our original reporting with comments and links to further information or resources, to help you and save you time in your research.

As a caregiver herself, Connie realized that what really helps a caregiver is quality information and reporting with links and tips to help you find the additional truly serious, in depth and useful information and resources you need. These resources are provided by many different medical, governmental, and other professional organizations. As a caregiver, Connie wished for a good and constantly updated resource to help save her time in finding this in depth, professional information and other resources when needed. That is what we aim to provide in our AnswersForCare™ Section.

3. CaregiversCollege™ — this section of the site provides access to classes, webinars, and education for caregivers, as well as online videos for caregivers in our CaringTube™ channel.

When faced with the need to care for her beloved Mother, Connie discovered how very helpful it was to attend a Care Assistance Program provided for family caregivers by a local hospital, which included classes with quality instruction in all aspects of caregiving. She discovered that this was a rare resource, not widely available to caregivers in the U.S. Unfortunately, we are mostly left to our own devices, each to “re-invent the wheel” as we learn for ourselves from scratch how to deal with all of the many issues we face in caring for our parents and elderly loved ones. Caregivers clearly need greater access to quality instruction. And, the need for development of a core curriculum on caregiving to help family caregivers, is pressing.

To our knowledge, HelpingYouCare® is one of the few sites that begins to address these needs. Watch for continued development of our site in this area.

4. OurTimeForCare™ — provides information & resources for caregiver self-care, including stress management and inspiration & humor.

Most family caregivers do what we do out of love and without attention to ourselves. Caregiver self-care is, of course, critical in order to fulfill your wish to be there for your senior loved one, as well as to avoid the increased risks of illness that studies have shown you may face as a result of caregiver stress and burn-out. Important parts of self-care are stress management, wellness practices (see our featured section on Wellness/ Healthy Living for Seniors & Caregivers), as well as respite, inspiration and humor for you as a caregiver. We believe that HelpingYouCare® is one of the few caregiver sites to focus in all of these areas to the extent we do.

5. CaregiversLikeUs™ — includes our online support groups and forums for caregivers, as well as a feature story on a caregiver each month, and our one-of-a-kind CareWiki™.

In our forum, we expect both caregivers like you and us and experts in eldercare to participate. There will be opportunities to “ask the experts” and to get support from our peers. In CareWiki, we invite all members of our community to “give back” by posting and sharing with other caregivers your own tips and links to helpful resources that you have found, to help other caregivers. This will become a kind of “Caregivers’ Wikipedia on Caregiving.” We are not aware of any other U.S. caregiver site doing this.

6. VoicesForCare™ — provides a comprehensive resource on health-care reform and long-term-care reform issues, and a platform for your voice to be heard.

As Baby Boomers are aging, many commentators have observed that we are headed for a long-term-care crisis in the U.S. and other countries unless we act to make needed reforms in our long-term-care systems now. Who better to know what needs improvement and make useful suggestions for reforms than caregivers, who are on the front lines of dealing with our health care and long-term-care institutions every day?

In VoicesForCare™ we provide news, updates, and editorials, with your comments, on health-care and long-term-care reform issues; advocacy and proposals for health care reform by experts and by our Community; links and information on pending and recently passed legislation; and information on health-care and long-term care in other countries, so that we can understand the facts of our our health care system compares and learn by comparison which solutions may work well and which do not.

Other than certain non-profit organizations, HelpingYouCare® is one of the only caregiver sites we know of that, in addition to our other resources, provides comprehensive information and resources on health-care and long-term-care reform issues, and helps your voice for care reform be heard.

7. BooksForCaregivers™, CareHelpFinder™, and ThingsForElderNeeds™ — provide a comprehensive array of other resources needed by caregivers.

In BooksForCaregivers™ you will find recommended books selected by our editors, along with a bookstore powered by Amazon.com, where you can purchase them. In addition, we feature monthly book reviews on books chosen by our Editors as well as Your Picks. Please submit your book suggestions and reviews and comments in the Your Picks section and throughout the BooksForCaregivers™ Section.

In CareHelpFinder™, we provide links to locator and search tools to help you find home health care; assisted living, nursing homes & rehabilitative care facilities, respite care, continuing care retirement communities, and other senior housing options and care facilities; care managers, advisors and other professionals; as well as other resources.

In ThingsForElderNeeds™, we include articles and updates on useful technology, devices, products and supplies, medical equipment, and specialized and comfortable senior clothing — all of which are helpful and needed in caring for your senior loved one(s). In addition, we provide a store, powered by Amazon.com, where you can find and purchase these items.

With all of these resources, we believe that HelpingYouCare® is one of the most comprehensive and we hope, helpful, caregiver sites on the web. We will greatly appreciate your feedback, comments and suggestions as to how we can make the site even more useful to you and other caregivers.

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Please register (if you have not already done so), login, and give us your comments below. If we deem appropriate, we may publish some of your comments, in whole or in part, and by communicating a comment to us, you consent to our doing so. We value highly and very much appreciate your comments, feedback, encouragement (hopefully!), and suggestions for HelpingYouCare®.

Many thanks,
Connie Barnhart Koontz, Founder and Editor, HelpingYouCare®

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Founder/ Editor & Senior Editor

Founder Connie Barnhart (right) with her Mother Margaret & Husband Dave, Senior Editor

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