Drafting a Process Evaluation 6311

5

Planning A Needs Assessment 11

Tolulope I. Moses

Master of Social Work, Walden University

SOCW 6311

Dr. Ashley Nazon

April 22, 2022

Planning and Needs assessment

Over forty-million adults in America who identified as caregivers often find themselves stressed and overwhelmed with caregiving roles. They offer care on a full-time or part-time basis for persons –usually, family members who need assistance with their day-to-day activities due to their illness. They have a common need that needs to be addressed, such as counseling, support, problem sharing, recognition in some cases, and socializing (Mohile et al., 2020). Conducting a needs assessment is critical to unveiling the needs of caregivers and addressing them accordingly.

The resources needed to operate this service

Resources needed to offer support to caregivers include respite care, financial support, emotional support, and medical aid. Respite care lessens caregivers caring responsibilities. It aids relieve their stress and maintaining their health. Respite care through volunteer programs helps caregivers perform their duties with less stress. Caregiving is often financially draining. As such, caregivers, especially those on a full-time basis require financial support to lessen the cost associated with caregiving (Fernandes et al., 2018). The National Family Caregiver Support Program, for instance, is a great resource for providing financial support to caregivers offering care for people aged sixty years and above. Emotional support is another great resource needed to operate a support program for caregivers. According to Fernandes et al. (2018), caregivers can benefit immensely from emotional and psychological support. Family and friends can be a great resource for offering emotional support to caregivers. Online support groups are also great avenues for offering emotional support to caregivers. Caregivers have little medical knowledge and often rely on medical experts to carry out their duties. Medical support through Medicare is instrumental in providing support to caregivers, which in turn improves their service delivery.

The program activities

Program activities for caregivers include Psychoeducation group activities, process-oriented activities, support group activities, and mindfulness activities. Psychoeducation group activities are forms of group activities that involve sharing information with caregivers. These activities include teaching caregivers healthy coping skills and creating a healthy environment for sharing and getting support. These activities are led by an experienced instructor who takes control of the group conversation and sets the goals for the group. In process-oriented activities, the facilitator leads the caregiver team but allows them to take center stage (White et al., 2018). The facilitator avails activities, projects, or discussions that members must complete. Process-oriented activities give caregivers members a sense of belonging and accomplishment which bolsters their self-esteem and builds trust and willingness to be among other people. Support group activities make it easier for caregivers to get them ready for meeting sessions.

The desired outcomes

Psychoeducation group activities will help create a safe space for caregivers to share information and get the needed support. Through these activities, caregivers will be equipped with healthy coping skills that enhance the quality of care they give (Frias et al., 2020). Since process-oriented activities offer an opportunity for members to share information, it gives members a sense of belonging. Support Group activities will provide a platform where members share information and get the support they need. It also offers a platform for obtaining advice or information regarding treatment options (Frias et al., 2020). Support group activities also help caregivers feel less lonely and isolated, which translates into improved quality of care.

A plan for gathering information about the population served

Most caregivers are found in hospitals and nursing homes; hence they will be ideal for gathering data. Data will be gathered by interviewing the focus groups and administering questionnaires with pre-coded questions about self-care, available resources, the support they receive, and their overall wellbeing (Siraj-Blatchford, 2020). Questionnaires are beneficial to respondents because they offer a faster way of collecting gather, and they are also economical and easier to analyse (Siraj-Blatchford, 2020). Where caregivers can be reached physically, interviews will be used as a way of data collection. Questionnaires are limited because the respondents are required to address pre-coded questions. Interviews will help gather in-depth information from respondents.

Justifications for your plans and decisions

Questionnaires will be used because they are economical, convenient to use, and highly scalable. Questionnaires also improve data accuracy levels. Since it may not be easy to get all the caregivers to one place, online questionnaires can be used to offer flexible ways of gathering data since respondents have the autonomy to choose where and when to complete the questionnaire. Since respondents find it difficult in conveying their feelings and emotions, direct interviews will be used to collect data where caregivers members can be reached (Siraj-Blatchford, 2020). Furthermore, interviews are effective in capturing emotions and behaviors. It also helps to capture both verbal non-verbal-ques, which are all vital in aiding needs assessment for caregivers.

Conclusion

In order to ascertain whether the needs of the caregivers are being addressed, questionnaires can be sent to recipients to identify whether the needs of the assessment are being addressed as proposed in the program evaluation. The effectiveness of service offered to caregivers during group activities can be used to gauge whether the needs of caregivers are being met by the program. In a nutshell, post-assessment activities will be used as a follow-up to the needs assessment of the implementation of the program evaluation.

References

Fernandes, C. S., Margareth, Â., & Martins, M. M. (2018). Family caregivers of dependent elderly: same needs, different contexts–a focus group analysis. Geriatrics, Gerontology and Aging, 12(1), 31-37.

Frias, C. E., Garcia‐Pascual, M., Montoro, M., Ribas, N., Risco, E., & Zabalegui, A. (2020). Effectiveness of a psychoeducational intervention for caregivers of people with dementia with regard to burden, anxiety and depression: a systematic review. Journal of advanced nursing, 76(3), 787-802.

Mohile, S., Dumontier, C., Mian, H., Loh, K. P., Williams, G. R., Wildes, T. M., ... & Shahrokni, A. (2020). Perspectives from the Cancer and Aging Research Group: Caring for the vulnerable older patient with cancer and their caregivers during the COVID-19 crisis in the United States. Journal of geriatric oncology, 11(5), 753-760.

Siraj-Blatchford, J. (2020). Surveys and questionnaires: An evaluative case study. In Doing early childhood research (pp. 223-238). Routledge.

White, C. L., Overbaugh, K. J., Pickering, C. E., Piernik-Yoder, B., James, D., Patel, D. I., ... & Cleveland, J. (2018). Advancing Care for Family Caregivers of persons with dementia through caregiver and community partnerships. Research Involvement and Engagement, 4(1), 1-7.