Lynda Anderson and Amy Hewitt Among Authors of New Brief on Caregivers

ICI’s Lynda Lahti Anderson and Amy Hewitt, along with Amie Lulinski of The Arc, co-authored FSRTC Research Brief #2: 60% of Family Caregivers Provide More Than 40 Hours of Support Per Week, which was published in Winter 2017 by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Family Support Research and Training Center (FSRTC). This data brief was developed in partnership with ICI’s Supporting Individuals and Families Information Systems (FISP)  project. The 2010 Family and Individual Needs for Disability Supports Survey (FINDS) conducted by The Arc shows that family caregivers play a critical role in providing supports to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The FSRTC data brief describes the kinds and amount of supports provided by families to individuals with IDD living in their family home. Caregivers provided an average of nine different kinds of support and more than half of all caregivers reported providing these supports more than 40 hours per week. More than half of caregivers in this survey reported being aged 50 or older, highlighting the critical need to start planning for a future when aging caregivers are no longer able to continue providing significant amounts of support for their family members.