November is National Family Caregivers Month. Did you know that research has shown that only 25% of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are connected to government-funded long-term services? That means that 75% of people with IDD and their families provide all of a person’s care and support on their own.
Did you also know that there are estimated to be more than one million households in the US where a person with IDD lives with a caregiver over the age of 60? In DC, we estimate at least 13,000 families are caregiving for a person with IDD where at least 2,500 of the caregivers are over the age of 60. Research has shown that more than half of these families have no formal plan in place for what will happen when a family caregiver is no longer able to provide support for their family member with IDD.
Quality Trust is proud to be part of a network trying to support those families and help them plan for the future so that their family members don’t find themselves in a crisis when their caregiver becomes ill or passes away. Our partners include the DC Developmental Disabilities Council (DDC), DC Department on Aging and Community Living (DACL), DC Department on Disability Services (DDS), Georgetown University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (GUCEDD), and RCM of Washington. We have trained ten Future Planning Navigators across our organizations to support families in understanding what future planning is, why it’s important, and how to get started.
In honor of National Family Caregivers Month, we held a Future Planning Open House on November 6 at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library. Quality Trust was proud to help provide one-on-one assistance to more than a dozen people with IDD and families so that they could begin planning for the future. People had questions about getting connected to senior and disability services, setting up ABLE accounts and special needs trusts, and putting in place a new decision-making support system.
If your family doesn’t have a plan for what will happen in the future, it’s never too late to start. Some planning is always better than no planning, and Quality Trust and our partners want to help. Please contact us at (202) 448-1450 or [email protected] and we’ll connect you to a Future Planning Navigator so that you can get started now!
You can also hear me talk about future planning on Fox 5 Morning News on Wednesday, December 3 around 8:30 a.m. Tune in